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Robert Browning 



THoug'Hts From 
Bro^wning^ S* ^ >^ 



Selections From tHe MTritin^s of 

ROBERT BROWNING 

For Every Day of tKe Year 
SELECTED AND EDITED BY 

ANN BACHELOR AtxtHor of 



'*Cax>lyle Year BooH," **Rt3isl£in Year 
BooK,** "THoti^Hts From Emerson" 



^^ Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale 

No man hath walked along our roads with step 

So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 

So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 

Give brighter plumage, stronger wing; the breeze 

Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on 

Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.''^ 

Walter Savage Landor. 



JAMES H. BA.RI.E (St COMPANY 

178 VTasHin^ton Street, Boston, Mass. 



.D5S^ 



LIBRARY ..♦'CONGRESS 
Twe Caples Rec«ivud 

MAR 4 1904 

, Copyright twitry 
CLASS ^ XXo. No. 

Z (^ 1 
COPY fi 



Copyright, 1903, 
By JAMES H. EARLE & CO. 



All Rights Reserved. 



•" 1 '■» . i i » . I • '• i • 



TO 

THE DEAR MEMORY OF 

MY FATHER AND MOTHER 



CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 

OF 

BROWNING'S LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

1812. — Robert Browning, born at Camberwell, London. 
May 7. Attended private school until fourteen. Instructed 
by tutors at home. 

1825. — Influenced by Shelley's poems. 

i829-*30. — Attends lectures at University College, London. 

1833. — " Pauline " published anonymously, January. 

i833-'34. — Travels in Russia and Italy. 

1835. — " Paracelsus " published. 

1837.—" Strafford" published. 

1840. — " Sordello" published. 

1841. — Publication of "Bells and Pomegranites " begun. 
' Pippa Passes " published. 

1842. — "King Victor" and "King Charles" published, 
" Dramatic Lyrics " published. 

1843.—" The Return of the Druses " published. " A Blot 
in the 'Scutcheon " published. 

1844. — " Colombe's Birthday " published. 

1845. — " Dramatic Romances and Lyrics " published. 

1846.— " Luria " published. "A Soul's Tragedy" pub- 
lished. Married Elizabeth Barrett, September 12. 

1847. — Settles in Italy, at Casa Guidi, Florence. 

1849. — Birth of Robert Barrett Browning, March 9. 
Poems published, first collected edition. Death of his 
mother, March. 

1850. — " Christmas-Eve " and " Easter-Day " published. 

1852. — "Introductory Essay to (spurious) Letters of 
Percy Bysshe Shelley published. 



CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY. 



1855. — " Men and Women " published. 

1 861. — Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi, June 29. 

1863. — Poetical Works published (in three volumes). 

1864. — "Dramatis Personae " published. 

1866. — Death of his father, June 14. 

1867. — Received the honorary degree of M.A. from the 
University of Oxford, and a few months later was made 
honorary fellow of Balliol College. 

1868. — Poetical Works published (in six volumes). 

i868-'69.— " The Ring and the Book " published. 

1871. — " Ballaustion's Adventure" published, August. 
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Savior of Society" published, 
December. 

1872. — " Fifine at the Fair " published. 

1873.— "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or Turf and 
Towers " published. 

1875. — " Aristophanes' Apology " published, April. " The 
Inn Album" published, November. 

1876. — " Pacchiarotto " published. 

1877. — "The Agamemnon of ^schylus" published, Oc. 
tober. 

1878. — " La Saisiaz ; the Two Poets of Croisic, published- 

1879. — "Dramatic Idyls" published, May. Elected Presi- 
dent of the new Shakespeare Society. 

1880. — " D,ramatic Idyls," second series, published, July. 

1 88 1. — London Browning Society holds its first meeting, 
October 25. 

1883. — " Jocoseria" published, March. 

1884 — "Ferishtah's Fancies " published, November. 

1887. — "Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in 
their Day," published. 



CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY. 



1889.— " Asolando : Fancies and Facts'' published, De- 
cember. Robert Browning died at Venice, December 12, 
buried in Westminster Abbey, December 31. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



JANUARY. 

Tread softly on the verge 
Of the New Year, and at its dawning fair 
Bow low thy head in reverential prayer, 

Unheeding the sad dirge 
Of the beclouded past, so full of sin, 
From which there only comes a requiem. 

Keep near the altar's fires 
Where all the year its sweetest incense burns; 
For love's pure gift the Father never spurns, 

Or mocks the soul's desires; 
But every deed performed for His dear sake, 
A heritage of precious good He'll make. 

O keep the new-born year 
As pure as when the midnight's ringing bells 
Declare that it is thine, and sweet peace tells 

Of a loved Presence near 
To lead thy straying feet in ways of right, ^ 
And keep thy life love-filled, each day and night. 

Then hasten, happy time. 
When the dim past shall all forgotten be, 
And an unclouded future faith shall see 

One life day, fair, sublime. 
That will begin while New Year's starlit air 
Is glorified by consecrating prayer. 

Mrs. M. a. Holt. 



10 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

January i. 
For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest 
Me, who am only Pippa, — old year's sorrow, 
Cast off last night, will come again tomorrow; 
Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow 
Sufficient strength of thee for New Year's sor- 
row. 
All other men and women that this earth 
Belongs to, who all days alike possess, 
Make general plenty cure particular dearth. 
Get more joy one way, if another, less; 
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven 
What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven, — 
Sole light that helps me through the year, thy 
sun's! 

• Pippa Passes. 

Even I already seem to share 
In God's love; what does New Year's hymn de- 
clare? 

Pippa Passes. 

January 2. 
It was eve, 
The second of the year, and oh so cold! 
Ever and anon there flittered through the air 
A snow-flake, and a scanty couch of snow 
Crusted the grass-walk and the garden-mould. 
The Ring and the Book. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. ii 

January 3. 
See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems 
Diluted, gray and clear without the stars ; 
The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if 
Some snake, that weighed them down all night 

let go 
His hold; and from the East, fuller and fuller 
Day, like a mighty river, flowing in ; 
But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold. 
Yet see how that broad prickly star-shaped plant, 
Half-down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves 
All thick and glistering with diamond d'ew. 

Paracelsus. 

January 4. 
Truth I say, truth I mean; this love was true, 
And the rest happened by due consequence, 
By which we are to learn that there exists 
A falsish false, for truth's inside the same. 
And truth that's only half true, falsish truth. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



Truth is the proper policy; from truth — 
Whate'er the force wherewith you fling your 

speech, — 
Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound. 
Somewhere above the lowness of a lie ! 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



12 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

January 5. 
O God, where do they tend — ^these struggling 

aims? 
What would I have? What is this "sleep" which 

seems 
To bound all? Can there be a waking point 
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule; 
It would be first in all things, it would have 
Its utmost pleasure, but, that complete, 
Commanding, for commanding, sickens it. 
The last point I can trace is — rest beneath 
Some better essence than itself, in weakness: 
This is "myself," not what I think should be; 
And what is that I hunger for but God? 

Pauline. 

January 6. 
All day, I sent prayer like incense up 
To God the strong, God the beneficient, 
God ever mindful in all strife and strait, 
Who, for our own good, makes the need ex- 
treme. 
Till at last He puts forth might and saves. 

The Ring and the Book. 



January 7. 
God gives each man one life, like a lamp, then 
gives 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 13 

That lamp due measure of oil: Lamp lighted — 

hold high, wave wide 
Its comfort for others to share. 

MUL^YKEH. 



Life is probation, and the earth no goal 
But starting point of man. 

The Ring and the Book. 



January 8. 
I go to prove my soul! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 
I ask not; but unless God sends His hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive; 
He guides me and the birds. In His good time! 

Paracelsus. 



January 9. 
Put pain from out the world, what room were left 
For thanks to God, for love to man? 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



To make, you must be marred, — > 
To raise your race, must stoop — to teach them 
aught, must learn. 



14 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Ignorance meet half way what most you hope to 
spurn, 

I' the equal. 

FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



January io. 
We look on helplessly 
There the old misgivings, crooked questions 

are — 
This good God, — what He could do if He would, 
Would, if He could — then must have done long 

since: 
If so, when, where and how? Some way must 

be, — 
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
Some sense, in which it might be, after all 
Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life." 

Bishop Blougram's Apology. 



January ii. 
God plants us where we grow. 
It is not that because a bud is born 
At a wild brier's end, full i' the wild beast's way, 
We ought to pluck and put it out of reach 
On the oak-tree top, — say, there the bud 
belongs ! 

The Ring and the Book. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 15 

Each purpose ordered right: the souFs no whit 
Beyond the body's purpose under it. 

SORDELLO. 



January 12. 
Then life is — to wake, not sleep, 
Rise and not rest, but press 
To the heaven's height, far and steep. 

ASOLANDO. 



But how carve way the life that lies before 
If ever bent on groaning o'er the past. 

Balaustion's Adventure. 



January 13. 
Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve. 
Somewhat to cast ofif, somewhat to become. 
Grant this? Then man must pass from old to 

new. 
From vain to real, from mistake to fact; 
From what once seemed good, to what now 

proves best. 
How could man have progression otherwise? 



Progress is 
The law of life, man is not man as yet. 

Paracelsus. 



1 6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

January 14. 
Religion's all or nothing; it's no mere smile 
O' contentment, sigh of aspiration, Sir — 
No quality o' the finelier-tempered clay 
Like its whiteness or its lightness; rather, stuff 
O' the very stuff, life of life, and self of self. 
I tell you, men won't notice; when they do, 
They'll understand. I notice nothing else; 
I'm eyes, ears, mouth of me, one gaze and gape, 
Nothing eludes me, everything's a hint 
Handle and help. 

Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." 



January 15. 

Truth inside, and outside, truth also; and 

between 
Each, falsehood that is change, is truth, is 

permanence. 
The individual soul works through the shows of 

sense 
(Which, ever proving false, still promise to be 

true) 
Up to an outer soul as individual too ; 
And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the 

fixed 
And reach at length, God, man, or both together 

mixed; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 17 



Transparent through the flesh, by parts which 

prove a whole, 
By hints which make the soul discernible by 

soul — ' 
Let only soul look up, not down, not hate but 

love, 
As truth successively takes shape, one grade 

above 
Its last presentment, tempts as it were truth 

indeed 
Revealed this time; so tempts, till we attain to 

read 
The signs aright. 

FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



January 16. 

O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, 
And all a wonder and a wild desire, — 
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, 
Took sanctuary within the holier blue, 
And sang a kindred soul out to his fac^, — 
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — 
When the first summons from the darkling earth 
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their 

blue. 
And bared them: of the glory — to drop down, 
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — 



i8 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

This is the same voice; can thy soul know 

change? 
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! 
Never may I commence my song", my due 
To God who best taught song by gift of thee, 
Except with bent head and beseeching hand — 
That still, despite the distance and the dark, 
What was again may be, some interchange 
Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought, 
Some benediction, anciently thy smile; 
Never conclude, but raising hand and hand 
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn 
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, 
Their utmost up and on — so blessing back 
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy 

home. 
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes 

proud. 
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall! 
The Ring and the Book. 
January 17. 
How inexhaustibly the spirit grows! 
One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach 
With her whole energies and die content, — 
So like a wall at the world's edge it stood, 
Vv'^ith naught beyond to live for, — is that 

reached? 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 19 

Already are new undreamed energies 
Outgoing under, and extending further 
To a new object: There's another world! 

LXJRIA. 



Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing 
That's spirit, though cloistered fast, soar free. 

Pacchiarotti. 



January 18. 

If I stoop 
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time; I press Gid's lamp 
Close to my breast; it's splendor, soon or late 
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day. 

Paracelsus. 



Aspire, break bounds I say. 

Endeavor to be good, and better still. 

And best. Success is naught, endeavor's all. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



January 19. 
This world's no blot for us, 
Nor blank; it means intensely and means good; 
To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 

Fra Lippo Lippi. 



20 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
Is — the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 

The Statue and the Bust, 



January 20. 
Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of Hfe, for which the first was made. 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith "A whole I planned." 
Youth shows but half; trust God; see all nor be 
afraid. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

January 21. 
All service ranks the same with God; 
If now, as formerly he trod 
Paradise, his presence fills 
Our earth, each only as God wills 
Can work — God's puppets, best and worst 
Are we; there is no last nor first. 

Say not ''a small event!" Why "small"? 
Costs it more pain than this, ye call 
A "great event" should come to pass, 
Than that? Untwine me from the mass 
Of deeds which make up life, one deed 
Power shall fall short in or exceed! 

Pippa Passes. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 21 



January 22. 
If thou shalt please, dear God, if thou shalt 

please ! 
We are so weak, we know our motives least 
In their confused beginning. If at first 
I sought . . . but wherefore bare my heart to 

thee? 
I know thy mercy, and already thoughts 
Flock fast about my soul to comfort it, 
And intimate I cannot wholly fail; 
For love and praise would clasp me willingly 
Could I resolve to seek them. Thou art good, 
And I should be content. Yet — yet first show 
I have done wrong in daring! Rather give 
The supernatural consciousness of strength 
Which fed my youth ! Only one hour of that, 
With thee to help-^O what should bar me then! 

Paracelsus. 



January 23. 

How very hard it is to be 
A Christian! Hard for you and me, 
Not the mere task of making real — 
That duty up to its ideal. 
Effecting thus complete and whole, 
A purpose of the human soul — 
For that is always hard to do; 



22 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



But hard, I mean, for me and you 
To realize it, more or less, 
With even the moderate success 
Which commonly repays our strife 
To carry out the aims of life. 
'This aim is greater," you will say, 
"And so more arduous every way." 
— But the importance of their fruits 
Still proves to man, in all pursuits 
Proportional encouragement. 
"Then, what if it be God's intent 
That labor to this one result 
Should seem unduly difficult?" 
Ah, that's a question in the dark — 
And the sole thing that I remark 
Upon the difificulty, this: 
We do not see it where it is. 
At the beginning of the race; 
As we proceed, it shifts its place. 
And where we looked for crowns to fall. 
We find the tug's to come — that's all. 

Easter-Day. 



January 24. 
It must oft fall out 
That one whose labor perfects any work 
Shall rise from it with eyes so worn that he 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 23 

Of all men least can measure the extent 
Of what he has accomplished. He alone 
Who, nothing tasked, is nothing weary, too, 
May clearly scan the little he effects; 
But we, the bystanders, untouched by toil, 
Estimate each aright. 

Paracelsus. 



Would you have your songs endure? 
Build on the human heart. 

SORDELLO. 



January 25. 
Could we by a wish 
Have what we will and get the future now 
Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 
So, let him wait God's instant men call years ; 
Meanwhile hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone 
God, stooping, shows sufficient of his Hght 
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise 

The Ring and the Book. 



January 26. 
Along with every act — and speech is act — 
There go, a multitude impalpable 
To ordinary human faculty. 
The thoughts which give the act significance. 



24 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Who is a poet needs must apprehend 

Alike both speech and thought which prompt to 

speak. 
Part these, and thought withdraws to poetry; 
Speech is reported in the newspaper. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



January 27. 
You call for faith; 
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. 
The more of doubt, the stronger faith I say, 
If faith o'ercome doubt. How know I this? 
By life and man's free will, God gave for that! 
To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice; 
That's our one act, the previous work's His own. 
Bishop Blougram's Apology. 



It is faith, 
The feeling that there's God, He reigns and rules 
Out of this low world. 

The Ring and the Book. 



January 28. 
Ay, God said 
This head, this hand should rest upon 
Thus, ere He fashioned star or sun. 
And having thus created me. 
Thus rooted me, He bade me grow, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 25 



Guiltless forever, like a tree 
That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know 
The law by which it prospers so, 
But sure that thought and word and deed 
All go to swell his love for me. 

Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 

January 29. 

But friends, 
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate'er you may believe. 
There is an inmost centre in us all, 
Where truth abides in fullness; and around, 
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
This perfect, clear perception — ^which is truth. 

Paracelsus. 

Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true. 

In A Balcony. 

January 30. 
Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! 
But not quite so sunk that moments, 
Sure though seldom, are denied us. 
When the spirit's true endowments 
Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
And appraise it if pursuing 
Or the right way or the wrong way 
To its triumph or undoing. 



26 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

There are flashes struck from midnig-hts, 

There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
Whereby piled-up honors perish, 

AVhereby swollen ambitions dwindle, 
While just this or that poor impulse, 

Which for once had play unstifled, 
Seems the sole work of a lifetime. 

That away the rest have trifled. 

Cristina. 

January 31. 
Let each task present 
Its petty good to thee. Waste not thy gifts 
In profitless waiting for the God's descent, 
But have some idol of thine own to dress 
With their array. Know, not for knowing's sake 
But to become a star to men forever; 
Know, for the gain it gets, the praise it brings, 
The wonder it inspires, the love it breeds; 
Look one step forward and secure that step. 

Paracelsus. 

Oh, if we draw a circle premature, 

Heedless of far gain. 
Greedy for quick returns of profit sure. 

Bad is our bargain! 

A Grammarian's Funeral. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 27 



FEBRUARY. 

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet, 
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate, 
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun, 
And crocus fires are kindling one by one: 

Sing, robin, sing; 
I still am sore in doubt concerning spring. 

I wonder if the springtide of this year 
Will bring another spring both lost and dear; 
If heart and spirit will find out their spring. 
Or if the world alone will bud and sing: 
Sing, hope, to me; 

The sap will surely quicken soon or late, 

The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate ; 

So spring must dawn again with warmth and 

bloom, 
Or in this world, or in the world to come; 

Sing, voice of spring, 
Till I too blossom, and rejoice and sing. 

Christina Rossetti. 



28 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

February i. 
No; love which, on earth, amid all the shows 

of it, 
Has ever been seen the sole good of Hfe in it. 
The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife 

in it. 
Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of 

it, 
And I shall behold thee, face to face, 
O God, and in thy light retrace 
How in all I loved here, still wast thou ! 

Christmas-Eve. 

February 2. 
These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend, 
As one breathing his weakness to the ear 
Of pitying angel — dear as a winter flower, 
A slight flower growing alone, and offering 
Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun. 
Yet joyous and confiding like the triumph 
Of a child; and why am I not worthy thee? 

Pauline. 

What a thing friendship is, world without end! 
The Flight of the Duchess. 



February 3. 
True love works never for the loved one so. 
Nor spares skin-surface, smoothening truth 
away. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 29 

Love bids touch truth, endure truth and embrace 
Truth, though embracing truth, love crush itself, 
"Worship not me, but God!" the angels urge; 
That is love's grandeur; still in pettier love 
The nice eye can distinguish grade on grade. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



Once Truth's banner unfurled 
Where's Falsehood? Sun-smitten, to nothing- 
ness hurled! 

Parleyings. 



February 4. 
Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his feet 
And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray 
"Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!" 
Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the bold. 
Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
That so he may do battle and have praise. 

The Ring and the Book. 



Was the trial sore? 
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time. 
The Ring and the Book, 



30 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

February 5. 
Such is my task. I g-o to gather this, 
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed 
About the world, long lost or never found, 
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope? 
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's, 
Or, finding they are one, who dare mistrust? 

Paracelsus. 



For God is glorified in man. 

Paracelsus. 

February 6. 
If one step's awry, or bulge 
Calls for correction by a step we thought 
Got over long since, why till that is wrought, 
No 'progress ! 

Sordello. 



Progress is man's distinctive mark alone, 

Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, 

Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. 

A Death in the Desert. 



February 7. 
When sudden . . . How think ye, then end? 
Did I say "without friend"? 
Say rather, from marge to marge 
The whole sky grew his targe 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 31 . 

With the sun's self for visible boss, 

While an arm ran across 

Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast 

Where the wretch was safe prest! 

Do you see? Just my vengeance complete, 

The man sprang to his feet. 

Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed, 

So I was afraid! 

Instans Tyrannus. 

February 8. 
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's. 
Is, not to fancy what were fair in life, 
Provided it could be — but, finding first 
What may be, then find how to make it fair 
Up to our means. 

Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



Duty be mine to tread in that high sphere 
Where love from duty ne'er disports. 

Bifurcation. 

February 9. 
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great. 
Our time so brief, 'tis clear if we refuse 
The means so limited, the tools so rude 
To execute our purpose, life will fleet. 
And we shall fade, and leave our task undone. 

Paracelsus. 



32 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

I count life just a stuff 

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 

In A Balcony. 



February io. 
The herded pines commune and have deep 

thoughts, 
A secret they assemble to discuss 
When the sun drops behind their trunks which 

glare 
Like gates of hell; the peerless cup afloat 
Of the lake-lily is an urn, some nymph 
Swims bearing high above her head; no bird 
Whistles unseen, but through the gaps above 
That let light in upon the gloomy woods, 
A shape peeps from the breezy forest-top. 
And with small puckered mouth and mocking 

eye. 

Paracelsus. 



February ii. 
To have to do with nothing but the true. 
The good, the eternal — and these not alone 
In the main current of the general life, 
But small experiences of every day, 
Concerns of the particular hearth and home; 
To learn not only by a comet's rush 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 33 

But by a rose's birth — not by the grandeur, God, 
But by the comfort, Christ. 

The Ring and the Book. 



My God, my God, let me once look on Thee 
As though naught else existed, we alone! 
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark 
Expands till I can say — even from myself 
I need Thee and I feel Thee and I love Thee. 
I do not plead my rapture in Thy works 
For love of Thee, nor that I feel as one 
Who cannot die; but there is that in me 
Which turns to Thee, which loves, or which 
should love. 

^ Pauline. 



February 12. 
Over the seas our galleys went. 
With cleaving prows in order brave, 
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave 
A gallant armament. 
Each bark built out of a forest tree. 
Left leafy and rough as first it grew, 
And nailed all over the gaping sides. 
Within and without, with black bull-hides. 
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, 
To bear the playful billows' game; 
So, each good ship was rude to see. 



34 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Rude and bare to the outward view, 

But each upbore a stately tent 

Where cedar pales in scented row 

Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine. 

And an awning drooped the mast below, 

In fold on fold of the purple fine. 

That neither noontide nor starshine 

Nor moonlight cold maketh mad. 

Might pierce the regal tenement. 

When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad 

We set the sail and plied the oar; 

But when the night-wind blew like breath. 

For joy of one day's voyage more. 

We sang together on the wide sea. 

Like men at peace on a peaceful shore ; 

Each sail was loosed to the wind so free, 

Each helm made sure by the twilight star, 

And in a sleep as calm as death. 

We, the voyagers from afar. 

Lay stretched along, each weary crew 

In a circle round its wondrous tent 

Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent, 

And) with light and perfume, music, too. 

So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness 

past. 
And at morn we started beside the mast, 
And still each ship was sailing fast. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 35 

Now, one morn land appeared — a speck 
Dim trembling, betwixt sea and sky. 
"Avoid it," cried our pilot, ''check 
The shout, restrain the eager eye !" 
But the heaving sea was black behind 
For many a night and many a day, 
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh. 
So we broke the cedar pales away. 
Let the purple awning flap in the wind. 
And a statue bright was on every deck ! 
We shouted, every man of us. 
And steered right into the harbor thus, 
With pomp and paean glorious. 

A hundred shapes of lurid stone! 

All day we built its shrine for each, 

A shrine of rock for every one, 

Nor paused till in the westering sun 

We sat together on the beach 

To sing because our task was done. 

When lo! what shouts and merry songs! 

What laughter all the distance stirs ! 

A loaded raft with happy throngs 

Of gentle islanders! 

"Our isles are just at hand," they cried, 

"Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping. 

Our temple-gates are opened wide, 

Our olive groves thick shades are keeping 



36 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

For these majestic forms," they cried. 
Oh, then we awoke with sudden start 
From our deep dream, and knew, too late, 
How bare the rock, how desolate. 
Which had received our precious freight. 
Yet we called out, "Depart! 
Our gifts once given, must here abide. 
Our work is done; we have no heart 
To mar our work/' we cried. 

Paracelsus. 

February 13. 
Not that, amassing flowers, 
Youth sighed, "which rose makes ours. 
Which lily leave and then as best recall?" 
Not that, admiring stars. 
It yearned "Not Jove, nor Mars ; 
Mine be some figured flame which blends, trans- 
cends them all!" 

_ Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

February 14. 
There is no good in life but love — but love! 
What else looks good, is some shade flung from 

love; 
Love gilds it, gives it worth. 

In a Balcony. 

Make life a ministry of love and it will always 
be worth living. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



^ 37 



February 15. 
Life to come will be an improvement on the 

life's that now; destroy 
Body's thwartings, there's no longer screen be- 
twixt soul and soul's joy. 
Why should we expect new hindrance, novel 

tether? In this first 
Life, I see the good of evil, why our world began 

at worst; 
Since time means amelioration, tardily enough 

displayed, 
Yet a mainly onward moving, never wholly 

retrograde. 
We know more though we know little, we grow 

stronger though still weak. 
Partly see, through all too purblind, stammer 

though we cannot speak. 
There is no such grudge in God as scared the 

ancient Greek. 

La Saisiaz. 



February 16. 

All human plans and projects come to naught; 
My life and what I know of other lives 
Prove that; no plan nor project! God shall care! 
The Ring and the Book. 



38 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Ay, God remains, 
Even did men forsake you. 

A Soul's Tragedy. 



February 17. 
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place. 

Hail to your purlieus 
All ye highfliers of the feathered race. 

Swallows and curlews! 
Here's the top-peak! The multitude below 

Live, for they can there. 
This man decided not to live but know — 

Bury this man there? 
Here — ^here's his place, where meteors shoot, 
clouds form^ 

Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the 
storm — 

Peace let the dew send. 
Lofty designs must close in like effects; 

Loftily lying, 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying. 

A Grammarian's Funeral. 



February 18. 
The swallow has set her six young on the rail. 
And looks seaward; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 39 

The water's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale, 

To the leeward, — 
On the weather-side, black, spotted white with 

the wind, 
"Good fortune departs, and disaster's behind" — 
Hark the wind with its wants and its infinite wail! 

James Lee's Wife. 



February 19. 
There is a vision in the heart of each 
Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness 
To wrong and pain, and knowledge of its cure, 
And these embodied in a woman's form 
That best transmits them, pure as first received 
From God above her, to mankind below. 

Colombe's Birthday. 



I will tell 
God's message; but I have so much to say, 
I fear to leave half out. 

Paracelsus. 

February 20. 
The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droop 
With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour. 
Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn 
Beneath a warm moon like a happy face; 
And this to fill us with regard for man. 
With apprehensions of his passing worth, 



40 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Desire to work his proper nature out, 
And ascertain his rank and final place. 
For these things tend still upward. 

Paracelsus. 

February 21. 
Let her but love you, 
All else you disregard! What else can be? 
You know how love is incompatible 
With falsehood — purifies, assimilates 
All other passions to itself. 

Colombe's Birthday. 



Such was ever love's way; to rise it stoops. 
A Death in the Desert. 



February 22. 

'Tis fruitless for mankind 
To fret themselves with what concerns them not; 
They are no use that way; they should lie down 
Content as God has made them, nor go mad 
In thriveless cares to better what is ill. 

Paracelsus. 



All is as God overrules. 
Beside, incentive comes from the soul's self; 
The rest avail not. 

Andrea del Sarto. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 41 

February 23. 
Then welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! 
Be our joy three parts pain! 
Strive and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge 
the throe! 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



February 24. 
God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind 
Mlind should be precious. Spare my mind alone! 
All else I will endure, if, as I stand 
Here, with my gains. Thy thunder smite me 

down, 
I bow me; 'tis Thy will. Thy righteous will; 
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die, 
And if no trace of my career remain 
Save a thin corporeal pleasure of the mind 
In the bright chambers level with the air, 
See Thou to it! But if my spirit fail. 
My once proud spirit forsake me at the last. 
Hast Thou done well by me? So do not Thou ! 
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be 
crushed! 

Paracelsus. 



42 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

February 25. 
Weakness never need be falseness; 

Truth is truth in each degree, 
Thunder pealed by God to Nature, 
Whispered by my soul to me. 

La Saisiaz. 

Well, now, there's nothing in nor out o' the 

world 
Good, except truth. 

The Ring and the Book. 



February 26. 
We all aspire to heaven, and there lies heaven 
Above us; go there! Dare we go? No, surely! 
How dare we go without a reverent pause, 
A growing less unfit for heaven? 

A Soul's Tragedy. 



There grows in every heart, as in a shrine, 
The giant image of perfection. 

Paracelsus. 

February 27. 
God takes an infinite joy 
In infinite ways — one everlasting bliss 
From which all being emanates, all power 
Proceeds; in whom is life forevermore, 
Yet whom existence in its lowest form 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 43 



Includes. Where dwells enjoyment, there dwells 
He 

Paracelsus. 

See God's approval on His universe! 
Let us do so — aspire to live as these 
In harmony with truth, ourselves being true. 

In a Balcony. 



February 28. 

And what is our fulness here but a triumph's 

evidence 
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered 

or agonized? 
Why else was the praise prolonged but that sing- 
ing might issue theme? 
Why rushed the discord in, but that harmony 

should be prized? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to 

clear, 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 

and woe; 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in 

the ear ; 
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis wemusi- 

cians know. 

Abt Vogler. 



44 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

There is no truer truth obtainable 
By man, than comes by music. 

Parleyings. 

February 29. 
No doubt, men vastly differ: and we need 
Some strange, exceptional benevolence 
Of nature's sunshine to develop seed 
So well, in the less-favored clime, that thence 
We may discern how shrub means tree indeed, 
Though dwarfed till scarcely shrub in evidence. 
Man in the ice-house or the hot-house ranks 
With beasts or gods; stove-faced, give warmth 

the thanks. 

The Two Poets of Croisir. 



O pale departure, dim disgrace of day! 
Winter's in wane his vengeful worst art thou 
To dash the boldness of advancing March! 

The Ring and the Book. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 45 



MARCH. 

The Bleak o' the Year. 

There is a time of subtle browns, and grays 
That run to silverings, and tremulous greens, 
And russet tints, and ash-pale pools of leaves; 
Of ghostly mosses and elusive grass 
That's neither lush nor dead ; of naked trees 
Ineffably harmonious with the sky 
That stretches vast and neutral, tone on tone 
Not to call a color, but a thought. 

To some this is a barren time, a sleep 
Between the winter and the spell of spring: 
To me it is the heart's own time and tide, 
Being hidden from the heedless eye that lusts 
For flaring lights and sunset dyes, yet charged 
With secrets rare, and blendings into dreams, 
And ecstasies divine that shadow forth 
A mystery, the Selah of the Soul. 

Richard Burton. 



46 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

March i. 
The morn when first it thunders in March, 
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say ; 
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch 
Of the villa-gate this warm March day. 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



March 2. 
The bee with his comb, 

The mouse at her dray, 
The grub at his tomb. 
While winter away; 
But the fire-fly and hedge-shrew and lob-worm, 
I pray. 

How fare they? 

PippA Passes. 



March 3. 
Let law shine forth and show, as God in heaven. 
Vice prostrate, virtue pedestalled at last, 
The triumph of truth! 

The Ring and the Book. 



Into the truth of things, 
Out of their falseness rise, and reach thou, and 
remain. 

Fifine at the Fair. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 47 



March 4. 
The centre fire heaves underneath the earth, 
And the earth changes Hke a human face; 
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren riverbeds. 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are 

edged 
With foam, white as the bittern lips of hate, 
WTien, in the solitary waste strange groups 
Of young volcanoes come up, Cyclops-Hke, 
Staring together with their eyes on flame — 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod, 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swol'n 

with blooms 
Like chrysalids impatient for the air; 
The shining doves are busy, beetles run 
Along the furrows, ants make their ado. 
Above birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 



48 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls 
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all 
From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
To man — the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere 
Of life, whose attributes had here and there 
Been scattered o'er the visible world before 
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant 
To be united in some wondrous whole. 
Imperfect qualities throughout creation. 
Suggesting some one creature yet to make, 
Some point where all those scattered rays should 

meet 
Convergent ini the faculties of man. 

Paracelsus. 

March 5. 
Oh, what a dawn of day! 
How the March sun feels like May! 
All is blue again 
After last night's rain. 
And the South dries the hawthorn spray. 
Only my love's away ! 
I'd as lief the blue were gray. 

A Lovers' Quarrel. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 49 



March 6. 

I trust in nature for the stable laws 

Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant, 

And autumn garner to the end of time. 

I trust in God— the right shall be the right 

And other than the wrong, while He endures; 

I trust in my ov/n soul, that can perceive 

The outward and the inward, nature's good, 

And God's. a o . ^ 

A bouL s Tragedy. 

March 7. 
That was I you heard last night 

When there rose no moon at all, 
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight 

Tent of heaven, a planet small. 
Life was dead, and so was light. 

Not a twinkle from the fly, 

Not a glimmer from the worm. 
When the crickets stopped their cry. 

When the owls forbore a term, 
You heard music; that was I. 

Earth turned in her sleep with pain, 

Sultrily suspired for proof. 
In at heaven and out again. 

Lightning! — where it broke the. roof, 
BloodHke, some few drops of rain. 



50 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

What they could my words expressed, 

O my love, my all, my one! 
Singing helped the verses best, 

And when singing's best was done, 
To my lute I left the rest. 

So wore night; the east was gray. 

White the broad-faced hemlock flowers; 

Soon would come another day; 
Ere its first of heavy hours 

Found me I had passed away. 

A Serenade at the Villa. 



March 8. 
Could you but know what 'tis to bear, my friend. 
One image stamped within you, turning blank, 
A weakness, but most precious, like a flaw 
r the diamond, which should shape forth some 

sweet face 
Yet to create, and meanwhile treasured there 
Lest nature lose her gracious thought forever! 

Strafford. 

March 9. 
And I know, while thus the quiet-colored eve 

Smiles to leave 
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece 

In such peace, 



THOUGHTS FROM '^BROWNING. 5 1 



And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray 
Melt away — 

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 

Waits me there 
In a turret, whence the charioteers caught soul 

For the goal, 
When the king looked, where she looks now, 
breathless, dumb, 

Till I come. 

But he looked upon the city, every side. 

Far and wide. 
All the mountains topped with temples, all the 
glades' 

Collonades, 
All the causeys, bridges, queducts — and then 

All the men! 

When I do come, she will speak not, she will 
stand. 

Either hand 
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 

Of my face, 

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech 

Each on each. , . 

Love Among the Ruins. 



52 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

March io. 
Dared and done; at last I stand upon the sum- 
mit, dear and true! 
Singly dared and done, the climbing both of us 

were bound to do. 
Petty beat, and yet prodigious; every side my 

glance was bent 
O'er the grandeur and the beauty lavished 

through the whole ascent. 
Ledge by ledge, outbroke new marvels, now 

minute and now immense; 
Earth's most exquisite disclosure, heaven's own 

God in evidence! 
And no berry in its hiding, no blue space in its 

outspread, 
Pleaded to escape my footstep, challenged my 

emerging head, 
(As I cHmbed, or paused from climbing, now 

o'erbranched by shrub and tree, 
Now built round by rock and boulder, now at 

just a turn set free. 
Stationed face to face with — Nature? Rather 

with Infinitude,) 
No revealment of them all, as singly, I my path 

pursued, 
But a bitter touched in sweetness, for the 

thought stung. Even so 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 53 



Both of us had loved and wondered just the 
same, five days ag-o! 

La Saisiaz. 

March ii. 
I find first 
Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
In the beginning God made heaven and earth, 
From which, no matter with what Hsp, I spell 
And speak you out a consequence — ^that man, 
Man — as befits the made, the inferior thing — 
Purposed, since made, to grow, not make, in 

turn. 
Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow; 
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
The good beyond him — which attempt is 

growth — 
Repeats God's process in man's due degree 
Attaining man's proportionate result. 

The Ring and the Book. 



March 12. 
Ever some spiritual witness new and new 
In faster frequence, crowding solitude 
To watch the way o' the warfare — till at last. 
When the ecstatic moment must bring birth, 
Began a whiteness in the distance, waxed 
Whiter and whiter, near grew and more near, 



54 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Till it was she. There did Pompilia come. 
The white I saw shine through her was her soul. 
The Ring and the Book. 



The snow-white soul that angels fear to take 
Untenderly. 



The Ring and the Book. 



March 13. 
Alack, one lies one's self 
Even in the stating that one's end was truth, 
Truth only, if one states as much in words ! 
Give me the inner chamber of the soul 
For obvious easy argument! 'Tis there 
One pits the silent truth against a lie — 
Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird, 
Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine. 
Steel spurs and the whole armory o' the tongue, 
To equalize the odds. But, do your best. 
Words have to come, and somehow words deflect 
As the best cannon ever rifled will. 

Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 



Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts. 
___^_ Paracelsus. 

March 14. 
Prognostics told 
Man's near approach; so in man's self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 55 

Of a dim splendor ever on before 
In that eternal circle life pursues. 
For men begin to pass their nature's bound, 
And find new hopes and cares which fast sup- 
plant 
Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great 
For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which 

fade 
Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while 

peace 
Rises within them ever more and more. 
Such men are even now upon the earth, 
Serene amid the half-formed creatures round 
Who should be saved by them and joined with 

them. _, 

Paracelsus. 



March 15. 
Well, is the thing we see salvation? 
I put no such dreadful question to myself. 
Within whose circle of experiences burns 
The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness, 

God; 
I must outline a thing ere know it dead ; 
When I outlive the faith there is a sun, 
When I lie, ashes to the very soul — 
Some one, not I, must wail above the heap, 
"He died in dark whence never morn arose." 
While I see day succeed the deepest night — 



56 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

How can I speak but as I know? My speech 
Must be, throughout the darkness, "It will end; 
The light that did burn, will burn!" Clouds 

obscure — 
But for which obscuration all were bright? 
Too hastily concluded ! Sun-suffused, 
A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by 

blaze — 
Better the very clarity of heaven; 
The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. 
What but the weakness in a faith supplies 
The incentive to humanity, no strength 
Absolute, irresistible, comforts? 
How can man love but what he yearns to help? 
And that which men think weakness within 

strength, 
But angels know for strength, and stranger yet — 
What were it else but the first things made new, 
But repetition of the miracle. 
The divine instance of self-sacrifice 
That never ends and aye begins for man? 
So, never I miss footing in the maze. 
No, I have light nor fear the dark at all. 

The Ring and the Book. 



March i6. 
So when spring comes 
With sunshine back again like an old smile, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 57 

And the fresh waters and awakened birds 
And budding woods await us, I shall be 
Prepared, and we will question life once more, 
Till its old sense shall come renewed by change, 
Like some dear thought which harsh words 

veiled before; 
Feeling, God loves us, and that all which errs 
Is but a dream which death will dissipate. 

Pauline. 



March 17. 
God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures 
Boasts two soul sides, one to face the world 

with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her ! 

One Word More. 

Oh, never work 
Like his was done for work's ignoble sake — 
Soul's need a fairer aim to light and love! 
I felt, I saw, he loved — loved somebody. 

In a Balcony. 

March 18. 
Let Spring come; why, a man salutes her thus: 
Dance, yellows and whites and reds, — 
Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads 
Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds! 



58 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

There's sunshine ; scarcely a wind at all 
Disturbs starred grass and daisies small 
On certain mound by a churchyard wall. 

Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows 

On the mound wind spares and sunshine 

mellows, 
Dance you, reds and whites and yellows. 

Parleyings. 

March 19. 
Our of your whole life give but a moment ! 
All of your life that has gone before, 
All to come after it, — so you ignore, 
So you make perfect the present, — condense. 
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment, 
Thought and feeling and soul and sense — 
Merged in a moment which gives me at last 
You around me for once, you beneath me, above 

me, 
Me — sure that despite of time future, time past, 
This tick of our life-time's one moment you love 

me! 
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, 

sweet — 

The moment eternal — just that and no more — 

When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core 

While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips 

meet ! ,t 

Now. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 59 



March 20. 
Now for this twentieth splendid day of Spring: 
All in a tale,— sun, wind, sky, earth and sea — 
To bid man, ''Up, be doing!" 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



As one Spring wind unbinds the mountain snow 
And comforts violets in their hermitage. 

Paracelsus. 

March 21. 
I have but to be by thee, and thy hand 
Will never let mine go, nor heart withstand, 
The beating of my heart to reach its place. 
When shall I look for thee and feel thee gone? 
When cry for the old comfort and find none? 
Never I know. Thy soul is in thy face. 

Any Wife to Any Husband. 



March 22. 
Morning, evening, noon, and night, 
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite. 
When to his poor trade he turned, 
Whereby the daily bread he earned 

But ever at each period 

He stopped and sang, "Praise God." 

Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done; 



6o THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

I doubt not thou art heard, my son ; 

As well as if thy voice today 

Were praising God the Pope's great way." 

The Boy and the Angel. 



March 23. 
Say, this life, 
I lead now, differs from the common life 
Of other men in mere degree, not kind, 
Of joys and griefs, — still there is such degree 
Mere largeness in a life is something sure, — 
Enough to care about and struggle for. 
In this world; for that to come, no doubt 
A great is better than a Httle aim. 

Colombe's Birthday. 



But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl. 

Paracelsus. 

March 24. 
Come, I will show you where my merit lies. 
Tis in the advance of individual minds 
That the slow crowd should ground their expec- 
tation 
Eventually to follow; as the sea 
Waits ages in its bed till some one wave 
Out of the multitudinous mass, extends 
The empire of the whole, some feet perhaps, 
Over the strip of sand which could confine 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 6i 

Its fellows so long time; thenceforth the rest, 

Even the meanest, hurry in at once, 

And so much clear is gained. I shall be glad 

If all my labors, failing of aught else, 

Suffice to make such inroad and procure 

A wider range for thought; nay, they do this. 

Paracelsus. 

March 25. 
The race of Man 
That receives life in parts to live in a whole, 
And grow here according to God's clear plan. 



Growth came when, looking your last on them 
all, 

You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day 
And cried with a start — What if we so small 

Be greater and grander the while than they? 
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? 

In both, of such lower types are we 
Precisely because of our wider nature; 

For time, theirs — ours, for eternity. 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



March 26. 
For lo, what think you? Suddenly 
The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky 
Received at once the full fruition 



62 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Of the moon's consummate apparition. 

The black cloud-barricade was riven, 

Ruined beneath her feet, and driven 

Deep in the west, while bare and breathless, 

North and South and East lay ready 

For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, 

Sprang across them and stood steady 

Twas a moon rainbow, vast and perfect 

As the mother-moon's self, full in the face 

It rose, destinctly at the base, 

With its seven proper colors chorded. 

Which still in rising, were compressed, 

Until at last they coalesced, 

And supreme the creature lorded 

In a triumph of whitest white, — 

Above which intervened the night; 

But above night, too, like only the next. 

The second of a wond'rous sequence, 

Reaching in rare and rarer frequence. 

Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, 

Another rainbow rose, a mightier, — 

Fainter, flushier and flightier, — 

Rapture dying along its verge. 

O, whose foot shall I see emerge. 

Whose, from the straining topmost dark. 

On to the keynote of that arc? 

Christmas-Eve. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 63 

March 27. 
Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever! 
Thou art gone from us; years go ^y and spring 
Gladdens and the young earth is beautiful, 
Yet thy songs come not, other bards arise, 
But none like thee: they stand, thy majesties, 
Like mighty works which tell some spirit there 
Hath sat regardless of neglect and scorn. 
Till, its long task completed, it hath risen 
And left us, never to return, and all 
Rush in to peer and praise when all in vain. 
The air seems bright with thy past presence yet. 
But thou art still for me as thou hast been 
When I have stood with thee as on a throne 
With all thy dim creations gathered round 
Like mountains, and I felt of mould like them. 
And with them creatures of my own were mixed. 
Like things half-lived, catching and giving life. 
But thou art still for me who have adored, 
Tho' single, panting but to hear thy name, 
Which I believed a spell to me alone, 
Scarce deeming thou wast as a star to men! 
As one should worship long a sacred spring 
Scarce worth a moth's flitting, which long 

grasses cross. 
And one small tree embowers droopingly — 
Joying to see some wandering insect won 
To live in its few rushes, or some locust 



64 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

To pasture on its boughs, or some wild bird 
Stoop for its freshness from the trackless air: 
And then should find it but the fountain-head, 
Long lost, of some great river washing towns 
And towers, and seeing old woods which will 

live 
But by its banks untrod of human foot, 
Which, when the great sun sinks, lie quivering 
In light as some thing Heth half of life 
Before God's foot, waiting a wond'rous change; 
Then girt with rocks which seek to turn or stay 
Its course in vain, for it does ever spread 
Like a sea's arm as it goes rolling on. 
Being the pulse of some great country — so 
Wast thou to me, and art thou to the world ! 

Pauline. 

March 28. 
Though winter be over in March by rights, 
Tis May, perhaps, ere the snow shall have with- 
ered well off the heights; 
You've the brown ploughed land before, where 

the oxen steam and wheeze. 
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint 
gray olive-trees. ^p at a Villa. 

With God a day endures alway, 
A thousand years are but a day. 

The Boy and the Angel. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 65 

March 29. 
That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it; 
This high man, with a gre?.t thing to pursue. 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one. 

His hundred's soon hit; 
That high man, aiming at a million. 

Misses a unit. 

A Grammarian's Funeral. 



Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man! 



March 30. 
Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once 
Into the vast and unexplored abyss. 
What full-grown power informs her from the 

first. 
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating 
The silent boundless regions of the sky. 

Paracelsus. 

Belief or unbelief 
Bears upon life, determines its whole' course. 
Begins at its beginning. 

Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



66 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

March 31. 

Airs over, then — does truth sound bitter 

As one at first believes? 
Hark! 'tis the sparrow's good night twitter 

About your cottage eaves. 

And the leaf-buds on the vines are wolly, 

I noticed that today; 
One day more bursts them open fully — 

You know the red turns gray. 

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest? 

May I take your hand in mine? 
Mere friends are we, — well, friends the merest 

Keep much that I'll resign. 

For each glance of that eye so bright and black, 
Though I keep with heart's endeavor, — 

You voice, when you with the snowdrops back, 
Though it stays in my soul forever! 

Yet I will but say what mere friends say, 

Or only a thought stronger; 
I will hold your hand as long as all may. 

Or so very little longer! 

The Lost Mistress. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 67 



APRIL. 

Dip down upon the northern shore, 
O sweet New-Year delaying long: 
Thou doest expectant nature wrong; 

Delaying long, delay no more. 

What stays thee from the clouded noons, 
Thy sweetness from its proper place? 
Can trouble live with April days, 

Or sadness in the summer moons? 

Bring orchids, bring the foxglove spire. 
The little speedwell's darling blue, 
Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew, 

Laburnums, dropping wells of fire. 

O thou, new-year, delaying long, 
Delayest the sorrow in my blood. 
That longs to burst a frozen bud. 

And flood a fresher throat with song. 



Now fades the last long streak of snow; 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 

By ashen roots the violets blow. 

Now rings the woodland loud and long. 
The distance takes a lovelier hue. 
And drowned in yonder living blue 

The lark becomes a sightless song. 



68 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING', 

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
And milkier every milky sail 

On winding stream or distant sea; 

Where now the sea-mew pipes, or drives 
In yonder greening gleam, and fly 
The happy birds, that change their sky 

To build and brood, that live their lives 

From land to land; and in my breast 
Spring wakens, too ; and my regret 
Becomes an April violet. 

And buds and blossoms like the rest. 

Tennyson. 



April i. 

Sure, he's arrived 
The tell-tale cuckoo; Spring his confidant, 
And he lets out her April purposes. 

PippA Passes. 

Now comes the story of the farm among 
The cherry orchards, and how April snowed 
White blossoms on her as she ran. 

PiPPA Passes. 

April 2. 
Thou wilt remember one warm morn when 

winter 
Crept aged from the earth, and spring's first 

breath 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 69 

Blew soft from the moist hills, the blackthorn 

boughs, 
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening 
In the sunshine were white with coming buds. 
Like the bright side of a sorrow, and the banks 
Had violets opening from sleeplike eyes. 

Pauline. 



April 3. 

Oh, to be in England, 

Now that April's there, 
And whoever wakes in England 
Sees some morning, unaware. 
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood 

sheaf 
'Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough, 
In England — now! 

.1 
And after April, when May follows, 
And the white throat builds, and all the swal- 
lows — 
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the 

hedge 
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's 
edge — 



70 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice 

over, 
Lest you should think he never could recapture 
The first fine careless rapture! 
And though the fields look rough with hoary 

dew, 
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 
The buttercups, the little children's dower. 
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad. 



April 4. 
Up, for the glowing day, leave the old woods! 
See, they part like a ruined arch the sky! 
Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots 
And grasses of the hill-top level with the air — 
Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden 
With light, like a dead whale that white birds 

pick. 
Floating away in the sun in some north sea. 
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air, 
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us. 

Pauline. 



April 5. 
The year's at the Spring, 
And day's at the morn: 
Morning's at seven: 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 71 

The hillside's dew-pearled: 
The lark's on the wing: 
The snail's on the thorn: 
God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world! 

PippA Passes. 



April 6. 
The woods were long austere with snow; at last 
Pink leaflets budded on the beach, and fast 
Larches, scattered through pine-tree solitudes. 
Brightened, as in the slumb'rous heart o' the 

woods 
Our buried year. 

SORDELLO. 

Water is beautiful, but not like air: 
See, where the solid azure waters lie, 
Made as of thickened air, and down below. 
The fern-ranks like a forest spread themselves 
As though each pore could feel the element. 

Pauline. 



April 7. 
You'll love me yet! — and I can tarry 

Your love's protracted growing: 
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry, 

From seeds of April's sowing. 



72 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

I plant a heartful now; some seed 

At least is sure to strike, 
And yield — ^what you'll not pluck indeed, 
Not love, but, maybe, like. 

i 
You'll look at least on love's remains, 

A 'grave's one violet: 
Your look? — that pays a thousand pains. 
What's death? You'll love me yet! 

PippA Passes. 

April 8. 
If I call "saint" what saints call something else — 
The saints must bear with me, impute the fault 
To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance, 
Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year 
Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers 

know. 
But if meanwhile some insect with a heart 
Worth floods of lazy music, spendthrift joy — 
Some firefly renounced Spring for my dwarfed 

cup. 
Crept close to me, brought lustre for the dark. 
Comfort against the cold, — what though excess 
Of comfort should miscall the creature — sun? 
What did the sun to hinder while harsh hands 
Petal by petal, crude and colorless, 
Tore me? This one heart gave me all the Spring! 
The Ring and the Book. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 73 

April 9. 
Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world! 
I think this is the authentic sign and seal 
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad, 
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 
Into a rage to suffer for mankind. 
And recommence at sorrow: drops like seed 
After the blossom, ultimate of all. 
Say, does the seed scorn earth and seek the sun? 
Surely it has no other end and aim 
Than to drop, one more die into the ground, 
Taste cold and darkness and oblivion, there: 
And thence rise, tree-like grow through pain to 

joy, 

More joy and most joy, — do man good again. 
Balaustion's Adventure. 



April 10. 

But Easter-Day breaks! But 
Christ rises ! Mercy every way 
Is infinite, — and who shall say? 

Easter-Day. 



But at the close a Hand came through 
The fire above my head, and drew 
My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 

Easter-Day. 



74 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

April ii. 
O Thou, — as represented here to me 
In such conception as my soul allows, — 
Under thy measureless, my atom width! 
Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass 
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points 
Picked out of the immensity of sky. 
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, 
Our known unknown, our God revealed to man? 
The Ring and the Book, 



God is the perfect poet. 
Who in his person acts his own creation. 

Paracelsus. 

April 12. 
All at once I looked up with terror. 
He was there. 

He himself with His human air. 
On the narrow pathway, just before 
I saw the back of Him, no more — 

No face : only the sight 

Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, 

With a hem that I could recognize. 

Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held 
By the hem of the vesture ! — and I caught 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 75 



At the flying robe, and unrepelled 

Was lapped in its folds full-fraught 

With warmth and wonder and delight, 

God's mercy being infinite. 

Christmas-Eve. 

April 13. 
Good to forgive; 

Best to forget; 

Living we fret; 
Dying we live. 
Fretless and free, 

Soul clap thy pinion! 

Earth have dominion, 
Body o'er thee! 

Wander at will 

Day after day — 

Wander away. 
Wandering still — 
Soul thou canst soar! 

Body may slumber, 

Body shall cumber 
Soul-flights no more. 

Wafts of soul's wings! 
What lies above? 
Sunshine and love! 



76 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Body hides — where? 
Ferns of all feather, 
Mosses and heather, 

Yours be the care. 



La Saisiaz. 



April 14. 
Today's brief passion limits their range; 

It seethes with the morrow for us and more. 
They are perfect — how else? They shall never 
change; 
We are faulty — why not? We have time in 
store. 
The Artificer's hand is not arrested 

With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished; 
They stand for our copy, and, once invested 
With all they can teach, we shall see them 
abolished. 

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven — 
The better! What's come to perfection 
perishes. 
Things learned on earth, we shall practise in 
heaven; 
Works done least rapidly. Art most cherishes. 
Thyself shall afford the example, Giotto! 

Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, 
Done at a stroke, was just, (was it not?) "O !" 
Thy great Campanile is still to finish. 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 77 

April 15. 
What made the secret of his past despair? 
Most imminent when he seemed most aware 
Of his own self-sufificiency; made mad 
By craving to expand the power he had, 
And not new power to be expanded? — ^just 
This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust, 
Joy comes when so much Soul is weaked in 

Time. 
On Matter, — let the Soul's attempt sublime 
Matter beyond the scheme and so present 
By more or less that deed's accomplishment, 
And sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid? 
Let the em.ployer match the thing employed. 
Fit to the finite his infinity. 

sordello. 

April 16. 
As in your sort of mind, 
So in your sort of search ; you'll find 
What you desire, and that's to be 
A Christian. 

Easter-Day. 

And so I live, you see. 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man, 



78 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Not left in God's contempt apart, 
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, 
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. 

Easter-Day. 
April 17. 
But truth, truth, that's the gold ! and all the good 

I find in fancy is, it serves to set 
God's inmost glint free, gold which comes up 
rude 
And rayless from the mine. All fume and fret 
Of artistry beyond this point pursued 

Brings out another sort of burnish yet 
Always the ingot has its very own 
Value, a sparkle struck from truth above. 

The Two Poets of Croisir. 



Hear the truth, and bear the truth. 
And bring the truth to bear on all you are 
And do, assured that good comes thence 
Whate'er the shape good takes. 

Saviour of Society. 



April 18. 

But pain — see God's 
Wisdom at work! Man's heart is made to judge 
Pain deser\^ed nowhere by the common flesh 
Our birthright, — bad and good deserve alike 
No pain, to human apprehension! Lust, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 79 



Greed, cruelty, injustice crave (we hold) 

Due punishment from somebody, no doubt; 

But ulcer in the midriff! that brings flesh 

Triumphant from the bar whereto arraigned 

Soul quakes with reason. In the eye of God 

Pain may have purpose and be justified; 

Man's sense avails to only see, in pain, 

A hateful chance no man but would avert. 

Or, failing, needs must pity. Thanks to God 

And love to man,— from man take these away, 

And what is man worth? 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



April 19. 
Have you found your life distasteful? 

My life did, and does, smell sweet. 
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 

Mine I saved, and hold complete. 

Do your joys with age diminish?^ 
When mine fail me I'll complain. 

Must in death your daylight finish? 
My sun sets to rise again! 

I find earth not gray but rosy; 

Heaven not gain but fair of hue. 
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. 

Do I stand and stare? All's blue. 

At the Mermaid. 



8o THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

April 20. 
In short, God's service is established here 
As he determines fit, and not your say, 
And this you cannot brook. Such discontent 
Is weak. Renounce all creatureship at once! 
Affirm an absolute right to have and use 
Your energies as though the rivers should say — 
We rush to the ocean; what have we to do 
Witl:^ feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales, 
Sleeping in lazy pools? 

Paracelsus. 

I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty; 
Sought, found, and did my duty. 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



April 21. 
If on the day when Spring's green girlishness 
Grew nubile, and she trembled into May, 
And on Miranda climbed to clasp the Spring 
A-tiptoe o'er the sea, those wafts of warmth, 
Those cloudlets scudding under the bare blue. 
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



The morn is carried off in purple fire; 
Day breaks at last ! Break glory with the day. 
The Return of the Druses. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



April 22, 
Earth's mill, where we grind and wear mufflers; 
A whip awaits shirkers and shufflers 
Who slacken their pace, sick of lugging 
At what don't advance for their tugging. 
Though round goes the mill, we must still post 
On and on as if moving the mill-post. 
So grind away mouth-wise and pen-wise, 
Do all that we can to make men wise! 
And if men prefer to be foolish. 
Ourselves have proved horse-like not mulish; 
Sent grist, a good sackful, to hopper, 
And worked as the Master thought proper. 

Pacchiarotti. 

April 2:^. 
Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling 
Doom o'er the mountains, while a sharp white 

fire 
Now shone, now sheared its rusty herbage, 

troubling 
Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire 
Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire 
Crashed down, defiant to the last; till — lo, 
The motive of the malice ! — all aglow, 
Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift 
r the rock-face, and I saw a form erect 
Front and defy the outrage, while — as checked, 
Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift — 



82 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing out- 
spread 
In depreciation o'er the crouching head 
Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile. 
O thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile, 
Was it when this — Jove's feathered fury-^slipped 
Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he 

ripped — 
This eagle-hound — neither reproach nor 

prayer — 
Baffled, in one more fierce attempt to tear 
Fate's secret from thy safeguard, — was it then 
That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air 
To reach thee, pay thy patronage of men? 
He thundered, — to withdraw, as beast to lair, 
Before the triumph on thy palHd brow. 
Gather the night again about thee now, 
Hate on, love ever! Morn is breaking there — 
The granite ridge pricks through the mist, turns 

gold, 
As wrong turns right: O laughters manifold 
Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair! 

Parleyings. 

April 24. 
Just as I cannot, till myself convinced, 
Impart conviction, so, to deal forth joy 
Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. B>z 

Renounce joy for my fellow's sake? That's joy 
Beyond joy; but renounced for mine, not theirs? 
Why the physician called to help the sick, 
Cries, "Let me, first of all, discard my health!" 
No, son; the richness hearted in such joy 
Is in the knowing what are gifts we give, 
Niot in a vain endeavor not to know! 
Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it! 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



April 25. 
I saw the Power ; I saw the Love, once weak. 
Resume the Power; and in this word I see. 
Too, there is recognized the spirit of both 
That moving o'er the spirit of man, unblinds 
His eye and bids him look. 

A Death in the Desert. 



Imperfection means perfection hid, 
Reserved in part, to grace the aftertime. 

Cleon. 

April 26. 
Lo, on a healthy brown and nameless hill 
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill. 
Morning just up, higher and higher runs 
A child, barefoot and rosy. See! the sun's 
On the square castle's inner-court's low wall 
Like the chime of some extinct animal 



84 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Half turned to earth and flowers; and through 

the haze 
(Save where some slender patches of gray maize 
Are to be overleaped) that boy has crossed 
The whole hillside of dew and powder-frost 
Matting the balm and camomile. 
Up and up goes he, singing all the while 
Some unintelligible words to beat 
The lark: God's poet, swooning at his feet. 

SORDELLO. 



April 27. 
For an edifice of cloud i' the gray and green, 
Of evening, — built about some glory of the west, 
To barricade the sun's departure, — ^manifest, 
He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapor, crag 

and crest, 
Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and 

deed. 
They cluster round and keep their very own, nor 

heed 
The world at watch; while he, breathlessly at the 

base 
O' the castellated bulk, note momently the mace 
Of night fall here, fall there, bring charge with 

every blow, 
Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 85 

r the structure : heights and depths, beneath the 

leaden stress, 
Crumble and melt and mix together, coalesce, 
Re-form, but sadder still, subdued yet more and 

more 
By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need 

pore 
No longer on the dull impoverished decadence 
Of all that pomp of pile in towering evidence 
So lately. -^ ^ 

•' FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 

April 28. 
Hark! 'Tis the melancholy wind astir 
Within the trees; the embers, too, are gray; 
Morn must be near. Best ope the casement; 

see. 
The night, late strewn with clouds and flying 

stars, 
Is blank and motionless; how peaceful sleep 
The tree-tops altogether! Like an asp, 
The wind slips whispering from bough to bough. 

Paracelsus. 

April 29. 
Life means — learning to abhor 
The false, and love the truth, truth treasured 

snatch by snatch, 
Waifs counted at their worth. And when with 
strays they match 



S6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

V the parti-colored world — when under foul, 
shines fair. 

And truth, displayed i' the point, flashes forth 
everywhere 

r the circle, manifest to soul, though hid from 
sense, 

And no obstruction more affects this con- 
fidence, — 

When faith is ripe for sight, — why reasonably, 
then 

Comes the great clearing up. Wait threescore 
years and ten. -c- t- 

•^ FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



April 30. 
There's heaven above, and night by night 

I look right through its gorgeous roof; 
No suns and moons though e'er so bright 

Avail to stop me; splendor-proof; 
For I intend to get to God, 

For 'tis to God I speed so fast, 
For in God's breast, my own abode. 

Those shoals of dazzling glory passed, 

I lay my spirit down at last. 

Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 



Yet God is good; I started sure of that 
And why dispute it now? 

Paracelsus. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 87 



MAY. 

May, sweet May, again is come, — 

May, that frees the land from gloom. 

Children, children, up and see 

All her stores of jollity! 

O'er the laughing hedgerows' side 

She hath spread her treasures wide; 

She is in the greenwood shade, 

Where the nightingale hath made 

Every branch and every tree 

Ring with her sweet melody; 

Hill and dale are May's own treasures, 

Youth, rejoice in sportive measures; 

Sing ye! join the chorus gay! 

Hail this merry, merry May ! 

Up, then, children, we will go 
Where the blooming roses grow ; 
In a joyful company 
We the bursting flowers will see; 
Up ! your festal dress prepare ! 
Where gay hearts are meeting, there 
May hath pleasures most inviting. 
Hearts and sights and ear delighting; 
Listen to the birds' swee't song, 
Hark! how soft it floats along! 
Courtly dames our pleasures share, 
Never saw I May so fair; 
Therefore dancing will we go ; 
Youths, rejoice, the flowerets blow; 

Sing ye! join the chorus gay! 

Hail this merry, merry May! 

A Minnesinger. 



88 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

May I. 
He leans into a living glory-bath 
Of air and light, where seems to float and move 
The wooded watered country, hills and dale 
And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with 

mist, 
A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift 
O' the sun-tracked dew. j^^ ^^^^^^ 



My own month came; 
Twas a sunrise of blossoming and May. 

sordello. 

May 2. 
Such a starved bank of moss 

Till, that May-morn, 
Blue ran the flash across: 
Violets were born! 

Sky — what a scowl of cloud 

Till, near and far, 
Ray on ray split the shroud: 

Splendid, a star! 

iWorld — how it walled about 

Life with disgrace 
Till God's own smile came out : 

That was thv face! 

Apparitions. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 89 

May 3. 
Is it better in May, I ask you? You've Summer 

all at once. 
In a day he heaps complete with a few strong 

April suns. 
'Mid the sharp, short emerald wheat, scarce 

risen three fingers well. 
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its 

great red bell 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the chil- 

dren to pick and sell. ^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^^ 

May 4. 
A moment after, and hands unseen 

Were hanging the night around us fast. 
But we knew that a bar was broken between 

Life and life; we were mixed at last. 
In spite of the mortal screen. 



The forests had done it; there they stood — 
We caught for a second the powers at play. 

They had mingled us so, for once and for good, 
Their work was dOne — we might go or stay. 

They relapsed to their ancient mood. 

______ By the Fireside. 

May 5. 
Thus the Mayne glideth 
Where my Love abideth. 



90 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Sleep's no softer; it proceeds 

On through lawns, on through meads, 

On and on, whate'er befall, 

Meandering and musical, 

Though the sluggard pasturage 

Bears not on its shaven ledge 

Aught but needs and waving grasses 

To view the river as it passes. 

Save here and there a scanty patch 

Of primrose too faint to catch 

A weary bee. 

And scarce it pushes 
Its gentle way through struggling rushes 
Where the glossy kingfisher 
Flutters when noon-heats are near, 
Glad the shelving banks to shun, 
Red and steaming in the sun, 
Where the shrew mouse wdth pale throat 
Burrows, and the speckled stoat; 
Where the quick sandpipers flit 
In and out the marl and grit 
That seem to breed them, brown as they; 
Naught disturbs its quiet way, 
Save some lazy stork that springs, 
Trailing it with legs and wings, 
When the sly fox from the hills 
Rouses, creep he ne'er so still. 

Paracelsus. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 91 



May 6. 

The creature and Creator stand 

Rightly related so. Consider well! 

Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God 

Must be ignored; love gains him by first leap. 

Frankly accept the creatureship; ask good 

To love for: press bold to the tether's end 

Allotted to this life's intelligence! 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



God's finger makes distinction all so fine, 
We would confound; the lesser has its use, 
Which, when it apes the greater, is foregone. 

LURIA. 



May 7. 
I only knew one poet in my life: 
And this, or something like it, was his way, 
You saw him go up and down Valladolid, 
A man of mark, to know next time you saw. 
His very serviceable suit of black 
Was courtly once and conscientious still, 
And many might have worn it, though none did. 
The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the 

threads. 
Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. 

How It Strikes a Contemporary. 



92 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



May 8. 

How quickly night comes! Lo, already 'tis the 

land. 
Turns sea-like: overcrept by gray, the plains ex- 
pand, 
Assume significance; while ocean dwindles, 

shrinks 
Into a pettier bound: its flash and plaint, me- 

thinks, 
Six steps away, how both retire, as if their part 
Were played, another face were free to prove 

her art, 
Protagonist in turn! Are you unterrified? 
All false, all fleeting, too! And nowhere things 

abide, 
And everywhere we strain that things should 

stay — the one 
Truth, that ourselves are true! 

FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



May 9. 
What hand and brain went ever paired? 
What heart alike conceived and dared? 
What act proved all its thought had been? 
What will but felt the fleshly screen? 

The Last Ride Together. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 93 



You never know what life means, till you die; 
Ever throughout life, 'tis death -that makes life 

live, 
Gives it whatever the significance. 

The Ring and the Book. 



May id. 
Poor vaunt of life, indeed, 
Were man but formed to feed 
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men; 

Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the 
man-crammed beast? 

Rejoice we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive! 
A spark disturbs our clod; 
Nearer we hold of God 

Who gives, than of His tribe that take, I must 
believe. r^bbi Ben Ezra. 

May II. 

Force, guile, were 
Arms which earned 
My praise, not blame at all; for we must learn 
to live, 



94 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Case-hardened at all points, not bare and sensi- 
tive, 
But plated for defence, nay, furnished for attack, 
With spikes at the due place, that neither front 

nor back 
May sufi'er in that squeeze with nature, we find — 

' life. 
Are we not here to learn the good of peace 

through strife 
Of love through hate, and reach knowledge by 

ignorance? 
Why, there are helps thereto, which late we eyed 

askance, 
And nicknamed unaware! Just so, a sword we 

call 
Superfluous, and cry out against, at festival; 
Wear it in time of war, its clink and clatter 

grate 
O' the ear to purpose then! 

FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



May 12. 
Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower. 
Beginning to die, too, in the glass. 
Little has yet been changed, I think — 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 95 

The shutters are shut, no Hght may pass 
Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 



I loved you, Evelyn, all the while; 

My heart seemed full as. it could hold — 
There was place and to spare for the frank young 
smile 

And the red young mouth and the hair's 
young gold. 
So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep — 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. 
There, that is our secret! Go to sleep; 

You will wake, and remember, and under- 

^^^"^* Evelyn Hope. 

May 13. 
On the great elm-tree in the open, posed 
Placidly full in front, smooth bole, broad branch 
And leafage, one green plenitude of May. 
O you exceeding beauty, bosomful 
Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences, 
Sun-warmth, dew-coolness, — squirrel, bee and 

bird, 
High, higher, highest; till the blue porcelains 
Leave and earth, there's nothing better till next 

step. 

Heavenward! 

The Inn Album. 



96 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

May 14. 
1 had a noble purpose, and the strength 
To compass it; but I have stopped half way, 
And wrongly given the first fruits of my toil 
To objects little worthy of the gift. 
Whv linger 'round them still? Why clench my 

'fault? 
Why seek for consolation in defeat, 
In vain endeavors to derive a beauty 
From ugliness? Why seek to make the most 
Of what no power can change, nor strive instead 
With mighty effort to redeem the past 
And, gathering up the treasures thus cast down, 
To hold a steadfast course, till I arrive 
At their fit destination and my own? 

Paracelsus. 

May 15. 
Never the time and the place, 

And the loved ones all together! 
This path — how soft to pace! 

This May — what magic weather! 
Where is the loved one's face? 

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, 
But the house is narrow, the place is black, 

Where, outside, rain and wind combine 
With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak. 
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 97 

With a malice that makes each word, each 

sign! 
O enemy sly and serpentine, 
Uncoil thee from the waking- man ! 
Do I hold the Past 
Thus firm and fast, 

Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? 
This path so soft to pace shall lead 
Through the magic of May to herself indeed! 
Or narrow if needs the house must be. 
Outside are the storms and strangers ; we — 
Oh, close, safe, warm, sleep I and she, 
— I and she ! 

Never the Time and the Place. 



May 16. 
But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight 
Above the baffled tempest; tree and tree 
Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, 
And every strangled branch resumes its right 
To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, 

waves free 
In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, 
While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, 
Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, 
Each grass-blade's glory glitter. 

Farleyings. 



98 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

May 17. 
Therefore to whom turn I but thee, the ineffable 

Name? 
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made 

with hands ! 
What, have fear of change from thee who art 

ever the same? 
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy 

power expands? 
There shall never be one lost good! What was, 

shall live as before; 
The will is null, is naught, is silence implying 

sound ; 
Whan was good shall be good, with, for evil, so 

much good more; 
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a 

perfect round. 

AbT VCXILER- 



May 18. 
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it. 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 

A Death in the Desert. 



God smiles as he has always smiled; 
Ere suns and moon could wax or wane, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 99 

Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled 

The heavens, God thought on me his child; 
Ordained a life for me, arrayed 
Its circumstances every one 
To the minutest. 

Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 



May 19. 
Here the blot is blanched 
By God's gift of a purity of soul 
That would not take pollution, ermine-like 
Armed from dishonor by its own soft snow. 
Such was this gift of God who showed for once 
How he would have the world gO' white. 

The Ring and the Book. 



First of the first, 
Such I pronounce Pompilia, then as now 
Perfect in whiteness. 

The Ring and the Book. 



May 20, 
For the air is still, and the water still, 
When the blue breast of the dipping coot 
Dives under, and all is mute. 
So at the last shall come old age, 
Decrepit as befits that stage; 
How else wouldst thou retire apart 



loo THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

With hoarded memories of the heart, 

And gather all to the very least 

Of the fragments of life's earlier feast, 

Let fall through eagerness to find 

The crowning dainties yet behind? 

Ponder on the entire past 

Laid together thus at last, 

When the twilight helps to fuse 

The first fresh with the faded hues, 

And the outhne of the whole, 

As round eve's shades their framework roll. 

Grandly fronts for once thy soul. 

And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam 

Of yet another morning breaks, 

And Hke the hand which ends a dream, 

Death, with the might of his sunbeam, 

Touches the flesh and the soul awakes. 

The Flight of the Duchess. 



May 21. 
I paused again; a change was coming — came; 
I was no more a boy, the past was breaking 
Before the future, and like fever worked. 
I thought on my new^ self, and all my powers 
Burst out. I dreamed not of restraint, but 

gazed 
On all things; schemes and systems went and 

came, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. loi 

And I was proud (being vainest of the weak) 
In wandering- o'er thoughts to seek some one 
To be my prize, as if you wandered o'er 
The White Way for a star. 

Pauline. 

And can it be, 
Dear Aureole, you have then found out at last 
That worldly things are utter vanity? 

Paracelsus. 



May 22. 
Honor is a gift of God to man 
Precious beyond compare; which natural sense 
Of human rectitude and purity, — 
Which white, man's soul is born with, — brooks 
no touch. 

The Ring and the Book. 



And they admired; nobility of soul 
Was self-impelled to reverence, they saw; 
The best men ever prove the wisest, too; 
Something instinctive guides them still aright. 

Balaustign's Adventure. 



May 23. 
Was it, then, by rarest chance, there fell 
Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained 
Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell 



I04 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, 
Its soft meandering Spanish name; 

What a name! Was it love or praise? 
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? 

I must learn Spanish, one of these days, 
Only for that slow, sweet name's sake. 

Garden Fancies. 

May 26. 
A poet never dreams; 

We prose folk always do; we miss the proper 
duct 

For thoughts on things unseen, which stagnate 
and obstruct 

The system, therefore; mind, sound in a body 
sane, 

Keep thoughts apart from facts, and to one flow- 
ing vein 

Confines its sense of that which is not, but might 
be, 

And leaves the rest alone. What ghosts do 
poets see? 

What demons fear? What man or things mis- 
apprehend? 

Unchecked, the channel's flush, the fancy's free 
to spend 

In special self aright in manner, time and place. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 105 

Never believe that who create the busy race 

O' the brain, bring poetry to birth, such act per- 
formed. 

Feel trouble then, the same, such residue as 
warmed 

My prosy blood, this morn, — intrusive fancies, 
meant 

For outbreaks and escape by quite another vent! 

Whence follows that, asleep, my dreamings oft 
exceed 

The bound. But you shall hear. 

FiFINE AT THE FaiR. 



May 27. 
To me, that story — ay, that Life and Death 
Of which I wrote "it was" — to me, it is; 
— Is, here and now; I apprehend naught else. 
Is not God now i' the world his power first 

made? 
Is not his love at issue still with sin, 
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? 
Love, wrong and pain, what see I else around? 
Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise 
To the right hand of the throne — what is it 

beside, 
When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods 

my soul. 
And, as I saw the sin and death, even so 



I04 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, 
Its soft meandering Spanish name; 

What a name! Was it love or praise? 
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake? 

I must learn Spanish, one of these days. 
Only for that slow, sweet name's sake. 

Garden Fancies. 



May 26. 
A poet never dreams; 

We prose folk always do; we miss the proper 
duct 

For thoughts on things unseen, which stagnate 
and obstruct 

The system, therefore; mind, sound in a body 
sane, 

Keep thoughts apart from facts, and to one flow- 
ing vein 

Confines its sense of that which is not, but might 
be. 

And leaves the rest alone. What ghosts do 
poets see? 

What demons fear? What man or things mis- 
apprehend? 

Unchecked, the channel's flush, the fancy's free 
to spend 

In special self aright in manner, time and place. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 105 

Never believe that who create the busy race 

O' the brain, bring poetry to birth, such act per- 
formed. 

Feel trouble then, the same, such residue as 
warmed 

My prosy blood, this morn, — intrusive fancies, 
meant 

For outbreaks and escape by quite another vent! 

Whence follows that, asleep, my dreamings oft 
exceed 

The bound. But you shall hear. 

FiFINE AT THE FaiR. 



May 27. 
To me, that story — ay, that Life and Death 
Of which I wrote *'it was" — to me, it is; 
— Is, here and now; I apprehend naught else. 
Is not God now i' the world his power first 

made? 
Is not his love at issue still with sin, 
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? 
Love, wrong and pain, what see I else around? 
Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise 
To the right hand of the throne — what is it 

beside, 
When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods 

my soul. 
And, as I saw the sin and death, even so 



io6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

See I the need yet transciency of both, 
The good and glory consummated thence? 

A Death in the Desert. 



May 28. 
For thence — a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me! 
A brute I might have been, but would not sink 
i' the scale. 

What is he but a brute 

Whose flesh hath soul to suit. 

Where spirit works lest arms and legs want 

play? 
To man, propose this test — 
Thy body at its best, 
How far can that project thy soul on its lone 



way? 



Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



May 29. 

Man might live at first 
The animal life; but is there nothing more? 
In due time, let him critically learn 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 107 

How he lives, and, the more Hght he gets to 

know 
Of his own Hfe's adaptabiHties, 
The more joy-giving will his life become. 
Thus man who hath this quality is best. 

Cleon. 



Live and learn. 

Not first learn, and then live, is our concern. 

Parleyings. 

May 30. 
Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam, caught 
With a single splash from my ewer! 
You that would mock the best pursuer. 
Was my basin over-deep? 
One splash of water ruins your sleep, 
And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits. 
Wheeling and counter-wheeling, 
Reeling, broken beyond healing; 
Now grow together on the ceiling! 
That will task your wits ; 

Whoever it was quenched fire first, hope to see 
Morsel after morsel flee 
As merrily, as giddily . . . 
Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on. 
Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple? 
Oh, is it surely blown, my martigan? 

PippA Passes. 



io8 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

May 31. 

Too much 
Have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine, 
To leave myself excuse for longer life; 
Was not life pressed down, running o'er with 

joy, 
That I might finish with it ere my fellows 
WTio, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay? 
I was put at the board-head, helped to all 
At first; I rise up happy and content. 
God must be glad one loves his world so much. 
I can give news of earth to all the dead 
Who ask me: — last year's sunsets, and great 

stars 
Which had a right to come first and see ebb 
The crimson wave that drifts the sun away — 
These crescent moons with notched and burning 

rims 
That strengthened into sharp fire, and there 

stood, 
Impatient of the azure — and that day 
In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm — 
'May's warm slow yellow moonlit summer 

nights — 
Gone are they, but I have them in my soul! 

PippA Passes. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 109 



JUNE. 

Month of the perfect love, 
Month of the perfect leaf — 

The mellow-mourning dove 
Thine only note of grief — 
Oh, let me hide within thy shade a sorrow past relief! 

Thou, unto whose employ 

All Nature's arts belong — 
Fragrance and warmth and joy — 
Admit me to thy throng. 
Thou canst not dull the pang, but oh ! tunc every chord 
to song ! 

Walter Brooke. 



no THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING, 

June i. 
Day! 

Faster and more fast. 
O'er night's brim, day boils at last; 
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cap's brim 
Where spurting and suppressed it lay. 
For not a froth-flake touched the rim 
Of yonder gap in the solid gray. 
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; 
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed. 
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 
Flickered in bound, grew gold, then overflowed 

the world! t^ ^ 

PippA Passes. 



June 2. 
He climbed with (June at deep) some close 

ravine 
'Mid clatter of its million pebbles' sheen. 
Over which, singing soft, the runnel slipped 
Elate with rain ; into whose streamlet dipped 
He foot, yet trod, you thoughit, with unwet 

sock — 
Though really on the stubs of living rock 
Ages ago it crenelled; voices for roof. 
Lindens for wall; before him, age aloof, 
Flittered in the coolsome azure damsel-fly, 
Bom of the shimmering quiet, there to die. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. iii 

Emerging whence, Apollo still, he spied 
Mighty descents of forests; multiplied 
T'lft on tuft, here, the frolic myrtle-trees, 
There gendered the grave maple stocks at ease, 
And proud of its observer, straight the wood 
Tried old surprises on him; black it stood, 
A sudden barrier ('twas a cloud passed o'er) 
So dead and dense, the tiniest brute no more 
Must pass; yet presently (the cloud dispatched) 
Each clump, behold, was glistening detached 
A shrub, oak-boles shrunk into ilex-stems! 

sordello. 

June 3. 
I say that man was made to grow, not stop, 
What help, he needed once, and needs no more. 
Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn; 
For he hath new needs, and new helps to these, 
This imports solely, man should mount on each 
New height in view; the help whereby he 

mounts, 
The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall. 
Since all things suffer change save God the 

• A Death in the Desert. 



God grants to each a sphere to be its world. 
Appointed with the various objects needed 
To satisfy its own peculiar want. p^^^^ELsus. 



112 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

June 4. 

Mark the flying orb! 
Think'st the halo, painted still afresh 
At each new cloud-fleece pierced and passaged 

through, 
This was and is and will be evermore 
Colored in permanence? The glory swims 
Guilding^ the glory giver, swallowed straight 
By night's abysmal gloom, unglorified 
Behind as erst before the advancer: gloom? 
Faced by the onward-forming, see, succeeds 
From the abandoned heaven a next surprise, 
And where's the gloom now? silver-smitten, 

straight, 
One glow and variegation! So, with me 
Who move and make, — myself, — the black the 

white. 
The good, the bad, of life's environment. 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



June 5. 

Mere decay 
Produces richer life; and day by day 
New pollen on the lily-petal grows 
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. 

SORDELLO. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 113 

God told him it was June; and he knew well, 
Without such telling, harebells grew in June, 
And all that kings could ever give or take 
Would not be precious as those blooms to him. 

Paracelsus. 



June 6. 
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement! 

Still moving with you; 
For, ever some new head and heart of them 

Thrust into view 
To observe the intruder; you see it 

If quickly you turn 
And, before they escape you surprise them; 

They grudge you should learn 
How the soft plains they look on, lean over 

And lose (they pretend) 

Cower beneath them. 

The Englishman in Italy. 



June 7. 
Man's cause — what other can we have at heart? 
Whence follows that the necessary part 
High o'er man's head we play, — ^and freelier 

breathe. 
Just that the multitude which gasps beneath 
May reach the level where unstifled stand 
Ourselves at vantage to put forth a hand. 



: : 4 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Assist :he prrstrate public. Tis by right 
Merely :; s-i:h rretence. we reach the height 
Wnere storms ibouni, to brave — nay, count 

their stress, 
Thoogb aD too well avrare — of pomp the less. 
Of peace the more! But who are we, to spmm. 
For peace's sake, duty's pointiiig? Up, then, — 

earn 
Albeit no prize we may but martyrdom! 
New, such fit height to latmch salvation from. 
How get and gain? Since help must needs be 

craved 
By would-be saviours of the else-unsaved. 
How coax them to co-operate, lend a lift. 
Kneel down and let us motmt? 

P.^^TFYIXGS. 



JUB£& 

Is it for nothing we grow old and weak. 
We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain 
ends, too. 

A Death nc the Desetl 



The good we hoped to gain has foiled us — well, 
WV do not see the ending: and the boon 

Maj wait us down the ages — who can tell? 
And bless us amply soosl 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 115 

June 9. 
'Twas in my plan to look on real life, 
The life all new to me; my theories 
Were firm, so them I left to look and learn 
Mankind, its cares, hopes, fears, its woes and 

joys; 
And, as I pondered on their ways, I sought 
How best life's end might be attained — an end 
Comprising every joy. I deeply mused. 

Pauline. 



God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake. 

A Death in the Desert. 



June 10. 
O world as God has made it, all is beauty, 
And knowing this is love, and love is duty. 

The Guardian Angel. 



Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee,- 
Thee and no other, — stand or fall by them! 
This is the part for thee. 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



June ii. 
This I say of me, but think of you. Love! 
This to you — yourself my moon of poets! 



ii6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the won- 
der. 
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know. 
There, in turn I stand with them and praise 

you — 
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
But the best is when I glide from out them. 
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight. 
Come out on the other side, the novel 
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of. 
Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 

One Word More., 

June 12. 
Leave help to God as I am forced to do! 
There is no other help, or we should craze. 
Seeing such evil with no human care. 
Reflect that God who makes the storm desist. 
Can make an angry violent heart subside. 
Why should we venture teach him govemame? 
The Ring and the Book. 



Be not extravagant in grief no less! 
Bear it, by augury of better things! 

Balaustion's Adventure. 



June 13. 
But let the sun shine! Wherefore repine? 
— 'With thee to lead me, O Day of mine. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 117 

Down the grass path gray with dew, 
Under the pine-wood blind with boughs. 
Where the swallow never flew 

Nor yet cicala dared carouse. ^^ ^ 

•^ PippA Passes. 



Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvanm: 

He strikes the great gloom 
And flutters it o'er the mount's summit 

In airy gold fume. 

The Englishman in Italy. 



June 14. 

No; Man's the prerogative — knowledge once 
gained — 

To ignore, — find new knowledge to press for, to 
swerve 

In pursuit of, no, not for a moment: attained — 

Why onward through ignorance! Dare and de- 
serve! 

As still to its asympote speeds the curve. 

So approximates Man — ^there, who, reachable 
not, 

Hast formed him to yearningly follow thy whole 

Sole and smgle omniscience! 

Parleyings. 

I thirst for truth. 

But shall not drink it till I reach the source. 
The Ring and the Book. 



ii8 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

June 15. 

I affirm and reaffirm it therefore; only make as 
plain 

As that man now lives, that after dying, man will 
live again, — 

Make as plain the absence, also, of a law to con- 
travene 

Voluntary passage ff om this life to that by change 
of scene, — 

And I bid him — at suspicion of first cloud 
athwart his sky. 

Flower's departure, frost's arrival — never hesi- 
tate, but die! 

La Saisiaz. 



June 16. 
Oh, the old wall here ! How could I pass 

Life in a long midsummer day, 
My feet confined to a plot of grass. 
My eyes from a wall not once away! 

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe 
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green; 

Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth. 
In lappets of tangle they laugh between. 

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe? 
iWhy tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING, 119 

The body, — the house, no eye can probe — 
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs? 

And there again! But my heart may guess 
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps; 

So, the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess 
Died out and away in the leafy wraps! 

Wall upon wall are between us: life 

And song should away from heart to heart! 

I — prison-bird, with a ruddy strife 

At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes 
start — 

Hold on, hope hard, in the subtle thing 

That's spirit: Though cloistered fast, soar free; 

Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring 

Of the rueful neighbors, and — forth to thee! 
Pacchiarotti (Prologue). 



June 17. 

It was roses, roses, all the way, 

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad 

The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, 
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, 

A year ago on this very day! 



1 2d THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

The air broke into a mist with bells, 

The old walls rocked with the crowds and 
cries. 
Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels — 
But give me your sun from yonder skies!" 
Thev had answered, "And afterward, what 
'else?" 

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun, 
To give it my loving friends to keep. 

Naught man could do, have I left undone, 
And you see my harvest, what I reap 

This very day, now a year is run. 

There's nobody on the house-tops now — 
Just a palsied few at the windows set — 

For the best of the sight is, all allow, 
At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet, 

By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 

I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
A rope cuts both my wrists behind. 

And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
For they fling whosoever has a mind, 

Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 

Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go? 

In such triumphs, people have dropped down 
dead. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 121 

"Thou, paid by the World, — what dost thou owe 
Me?" God might have questioned; but now 
instead 
Tis God shall requite! I am safer so. 

The Patriot. 

June 18, 
There's a fancy some lean to and others hate — 

That, when this life is ended, begins 
New work for the soul in another state, 

Where it strives and gets weary, loses and 
wins; 
Where the strong and the weak, this world's 
congeries. 
Repeat in large what they practised in small. 
Through life after life in unlimited series; 
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all. 

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 
By the means of Evil that Good is best. 
And, through earth and its noise, what is 
heaven's serene, — 
When our faith in the same has stood the 
test- 
Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, 

The uses of labor are surely done. 
There remaineth a rest for the people of God; 
And I have had troubles enough for one. 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



122 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



June 19. 
God holds appraising in his hollow palm, 
Not act grown great thence on the world below, 
Leafage and branchage, vulgar eyes admire. 
Therefore I stand on my integrity, 
Nor fear at all. 

The Ring and the Book. 



No: as with body so deals law with soul, 
That's stung to strength through weakness, 

strives for good 
Through evil — earth its race-ground, Heaven its 

goal. 
Presumably. 

Parleyings. 



June 20. 
How dared I let expand the force 
Within me, till some out-soul, whose resource 
It grew for, should direct it? Every law 
Of life, its every fitness, every flaw, 
Must One determine whose corporeal shape 
Would be no other than the prime escape 
And revelation to me of a Will 
Orb-like o'ershrouded, and inscrutable 
Above, save at the point which, I should know. 
Shone that myself, my powers, might overflow 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 123 



So far, so much; as now it signified 

Which earthly shape it henceforth chose my 

guide, 
Whose mortal lip selected to declare 
Its oracles, what fleshly garb would wear 
— The first of intimations, whom to love; 
The next how to love him. 

SORDELLO. 



June 21. 
Overhead the tree-tops meet, 
Flowers and grass spring 'neath my feet; 
There was naught above me, naught below; 
My childhood had not learned to know; 
For what are the voices of birds 
—Aye, and of beasts,— but words, our words, 
Only so much more sweet? 
The knowledge of that with my life began. 
But I had so near made out the sun, 
And counted your stars, the seven and one, 
Like the fingers of my hand; 
Nay, I could all but understand 
Wherefore through heaven the white moon 

ranges, 
And just when out of her soft fifty changes 
No unfamiliar face might overlook me — 

Suddenly God took me. 

PippA Passes. 



124 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

June 22. 
Wanting is — ^what? 
Summer redundant, 
Blueness abundant, 
— ^Where is the blot? 
Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, 
— Framework which waits for a painter to frame; 
What of the leafage, what of the flower? 
Roses embowering with naught they embower! 
Come then, complete incompletion, O comer, 
Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer! 
Breathe but a breath 

Rose-beauty above. 
And all that was death 
Grows life, grows love, 
Grows love! 

Wanting Is — What? 



June 23. 
Noon is the conqueror, — not a spray, nor leaf. 
Nor herb, nor blossom, but has rendered up 
Its morning dew; the valley seemed one cup 
Of cloud-smoke, but the vapor's reign was brief; 
Sun-smitten, see, it hangs — the filmy haze — 
Gray-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, 
To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and 

wide 
Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 125 

With fierce immitigable blue, no bird 
Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks 
Which still presume there, plain each pale point 

speaks 
In wan transparency of waste incurred 
By over-daring: far from me be such! 
Deep in the hollow, rather where combine 
Tree, shrub and briar to roof with shade and 

cool 
The remnant of some lily-strangled pool, 
Edged 'round with mossy fringing soft and fine. 
Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead 
Watch elder, bramble, rose and service-tree 
And one beneficent rich barberry 
Jewelled all over with fruit-pendants red. 

Parleyings. 

June 24. 

Youth is the only time 
To think and decide on a great cause: 
Manhood with action follows; but 'tis dreary 
To have to alter our whole life in age — 
The time past, the strength gone! 

Strafford. 

Ever ahead i' the march, 
Quick at the by-road and the cut-across. 
She went to the best adviser, God — 

The Ring and the Book. 



126 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

/UNE 25. 

No creature's made so mean 
But that, some way, it boasts, could we investi- 
gate 
Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of fate, 
Its momentary task, gets glory all its own. 
Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone. 
Where is the single grain of sand, 'mid millions 

heaped 
Confusedly on the beach, but, did we know, has 

leaped 
Or will leap, would we wait, i' the century, some 

once, 
To the very throne of things? — earth's highest 

for the nonce. 
When sunshine shall impinge on just that grain's 

facette 
Which fronts him fullest, first, returns his ray 

with jet 
Of promptest praise, thanks God in creation's 

"^"^^' FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



June 26. 
A people is but the attempt of many 
To rise to the complete life of one; 
And those who live as models for the mass 
Are simply of more value than they all. 
Such men are you, and such a time as this, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 127 

What your sole fate concerns a nation more 
Than much apparent failure: That to prove 
Your rectitude, and duly crown the same, 
Imports us far today's event, 
A battle's loss or gain: man's mass remains, — 
Keep but God's model safe, new men will rise 
To take its mould, and other days to prove 
How great a good was Luria's glory. 

LURIA. 



June 27. 
Rafael made a century of sonnets, 
Made and wrote them in a certain volume 
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil 
Else he only used to draw Madonnas ; 
These, the world might view — but one, the 

volume. 
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs 

you. 
Did she live and love it all her lifetime? 
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, 
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow. 
Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving — 
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's? 

You and I would rather read that volume, 
(Taken to his beating bosom by it) 



128 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas — 
Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 
Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre — 
Seen by us and all the world in circle. 

You and I will never read that volume. 
Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple 
Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 
Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 
Cried, and the world cried, too, "Ours, the 

treasure !" 
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 

One Word More. 

June 28. 
O lover of my life, O soldier-saint. 
No work begun shall ever pause for death! 
Love will be helpful to me more and more 
r the coming course, the new path I must 

tread — 
My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for 

that! 
Tell him, that if I seem without him now, 
That's the world's insight! Oh, he understands! 
He is at Civita — do I once doubt 
The world again is holding us apart? 
He had been here, displayed in my behalf 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 129 

The broad brow that reverberates the truth, 
And flashed the word God gave him back to 

man! 
I know where the free soul Is flown ! My fate 
Will have been hard for even him to bear: 
Let it confirm him in the trust of God, 
Showing how holily he dared the deed! 
And, for the rest, — say, from the deed, no touch 
Of harm came, but all good, all happiness, 
Not one fleck of failure! 

The Ring and the Book. 



June 29. 
Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, 
A mite of my twelve-hours treasure. 
The last of thy gazes or glances, 
(Be they grant thou art bound to or g^ft above 

measure) 
One of thy choice or one of thy chances, 
(Be thy tasks God imposed thee or freaks at thy 

pleasure) 
— ^M'y Day, if I squander such labor or leisure 
Then shall shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me! 

PippA Passes. 

June 30. 
All that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 



I30 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

(Like the angled spar) 
Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs 
furled ; 
They must solace themselves with the Saturn 
above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 
Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I 
love it. 

My Star, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 131 



JULY. 

It's O my heart, my heart, 

To be out in the sun and sing — 
To sing and shout in the fields about, 

In the balm and the blossoming! 

Sing loud, O bird in the tree ; 

bird, sing loud in the sky. 

And honey-bee, blacken the clover-beds — 
There are none so glad as I. 

The leaves laugh low in the wind. 

Laugh low, with the wind at play; 
And the odorous call of flowers call 

Entices my soul away! 

For O but the world is fair, is fair — 

And O but the world is sweet! 
I will out in the gold of the blossoming mould, 

And sit at the Master's feet. 

And the love that my heart would speak, 

1 will fold in the lily's rim, 

That th' lips of the blossom, more pure and meek. 
May offer it up to Him. 

Then sing in the hedgerow green, O thrush, 

O skylark, sing in the blue; 
Sing loud, sing clear, that the King may hear. 

And my soul shall sing with you! 

Ina Coolbrith. 



132 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

July i. 
Linden — flower-time — ^long 
Her eyes were on the ground; 'tis July, strong 
Now; and because white dust clouds overwhelm 
The woodside, here or by the village elm 
That holds the morn, she meets you, somewhat 

pale. 
But letting you lift up her coarse flax veil 
And whisper (the damp little hand in yours) 
Of love, heart's love, your heart's love that en- 
dures 

Till death. Sordello. 

As German Boehme never cared for plants 
Until it happed, a- walking in the fields. 
He noticed all at once that plants could speak. 
Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with 

him. 
That day the daisy had an eye indeed — 
Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! 
We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. 

Men and Women. 

July 2. 
However, you're my man, you've seen the world 
— The beauty and the wonder and the power, 
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and 

shades, 
Changes, surprises, — and God made it all! 

Fra Lippo Lippi. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 133 

We find great things are made of little things, 
And little things go lessening till at last 
Comes God behind them. 

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium." 



July 3. 
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — 
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love. 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. 
A Death in the Desert. 



Heart to heart 
And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, 
Clasp me, and make me thine, as mine thou art! 

In A Gondola, 

July 4. 
In one year they sent a million fighters forth 

South and North, 
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high 

As the sky. 
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force — 

Gold, of course. 
Oh, heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that 
burns ! 

Earth's returns 
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin ! 
Shut them in 



134 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

With their triumphs and their glories and the 
rest! 

Love is best. 

Love among the Ruins. 



July 5- 
Why should despair be? since, distinct above 
Man's wickedness and folly, flies the wind 
And floats the cloud, free transport for our soul 
Out of its fleshly durance dim and low, — 
Since disembodied soul anticipates 
(Thought-born as now, in rapturous unrestraint) 
Above all crowding, crystal silentness, 
Above all noise, a silver solitude: — 
Surely, where thought so bears the soul, soul in 

time 
May permanently bide, there work in hope once 

more — 
O nothing doubt, Philemon! Greed and strife, 
Hatred and cark and care, what place have they 
In yon blue liberty of heaven? 
How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will 

rise 
Breast-high theme, some bright morning, and 

be Rhodes! 
Heaven, earth and sea, my warrant — in their 

name, 
Believe — o'er falsehood, truth is surely sphered. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 135 

O'er ugliness beams beauty, o'er this world 
Extends that realm where, "as the wise assert," 
Philemon, thou shalt see Euripides 
Clearer than mortal sense preserved the soul. 

iVRISTOPHANE's APOLOGY. 



July 6. 
Tis so long since I have smiled! Alas such 

smiles are born 
Alone of hearts like yours, or herdsmen's souls 
Of ancient time, whose eyes, calm as their 

flocks, 
Saw in the stars mere garishy of heaven, 
And in the earth a stage for altars only. 

Paracelsus. 



My love of England — how her name, a word 
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart 
beat! 

Pauline. 

July 7. 
So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow force; 
What then? since Swiftness gives the char- 
ioteer 
The palm, his hope be in the horse 

Whose neck God clothed with thunder, i:ot 
the star 



136 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Sluggish and safe! Yoke Hatred, Crime, Re- 
morse, 
Despair; but ever 'mid the whirling fear, 
Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face, 
Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race! 
The Two Poets of Croisic. 



July 8. 
God who registers the cup 
Of mere cold water, for His sake 
To a disciple rendered up, 
Disdains not His own thirst to slake 
At the poorest love was ever offered: 
And because it was my heart I proffered, 
With true love trembling at the brim. 
He suffers me to follow Him 
Forever, my own way, — dispensed 
From seeking to be influenced 
By all the less immediate ways 
That earth, in worships manifold. 
Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, 
The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold! 

Christmas-Eve. 

July 9. 
So, I create a world for these my shapes 
Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength! 
And, at the word, I would contrive and paint 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 137 

Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands 

and wastes, 
Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quiver- 
ing bed. 
Blaze like a wyvern flying" 'round the sun, 
And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking 
A dead whale, who should find them, would 

swim thrice 
Around them, and fare onward — ^all to hold 
The offspring of my bosom. Nor these alone: 
Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt. 
Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces. 
Marts, theatres, and wharfs — all filled with men, 
Men everywhere! And this performed in turn, 
When those who looked on, pined to hear the 

hopes 
And fears and hates and loves which moved the 

crowd, 
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel 
And I would speak; no thought which ever stirred 
A human breast should be untold. 

Paracelsus. 



July 10. 
Of all the lamentable debts incurred 
By M'an through buying knowledge, this were 

worst. 
That he should find his last gain prove his first 



138 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Was futile — merely nescience absolute, 
Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit 
Haply undreamed of in the soul's spring-tide, 
Pursedi in the petals Summer opens wide, 
And Autumm, withering, rounds to perfect ripe, — 
Not this, — but ignorance, a bjur to wipe 
From human records, late it graced so much. 
"Truth — ^this attainment? Ah, but such and 

such 
Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable 
When we attained them! E'en as they so will 
This their successor have the due morn, noon. 
Evening and night — ^just as an old-world tune 
Wears out and drops away, until who hears 
Smilingly questions — This it was brought tears 
Once to all eyes, — ^this roused heart's rapture 

once? 
So will it be with truth that, for the nonce. 
Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile! 
Knowledge turns nescience, — foremost on the 

file. 
Simply proves first of our delusions. 

Parleyings. 



July ii. 

Yet gifts should prove their use; 

I own the Past profuse 

Of power each side, perfection every turn: 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 139 

Eyes, ears took in their dole, 
Brain treasured up the whole; 
Should not the heart beat once — "How good to 
live and learn?" 

Not once beat "Praise be Thine! 
I see the whole design, 

I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect, too; 
Perfect I call Thy plan; 
Thanks that I was a man ! 

Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what thou 
Shalt do!" 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



July 12. 
What is man bound to but — assent, I say? 
Rather to rapture of thanksgiving: since 
That which seems vast to man to God is best. 
So, because God ordains it, best to man. 
Yet man, — ^the foolish, weak, and wicked — 

prays ! 
Urges "My best were better, didst thou know!" 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



Right, promptly done, is twice right; right de- 
layed 

^' The Ring and the Book. 



I40 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

July 13. 

Henceforth man's existence bows to the moni- 
tion, 'Wait," 

Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither with 
extreme concern ! 

Living here means nescience simply ; 'tis next life 
that helps to learn. 

Shut those eyes, next life will open, — stop those 
ears, next life will teach 

Hearing's office, — close those lips, next life will 
give the power of speech! 

Or, if action more amuse thee than the passive 
attitude. 

Bravely bristle through thy being, busy thee for 
ill or good, 

Reap this life's success or failure! Soon shall 
things be unperplexed 

And the right and wrong, now tangled, lie un- 
ravelled in the next. 

Life must needs be borne, — I also will that man 

become aware 
Life has worth incalculable, every moment that 

he spends 
So much gain or loss for that next life which on 

this life depends. 
Good done here, be there rewarded, — evil, 

worked here, there amerced! ^^ Saisiaz. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 141 



July 14. 
All love renders wise 

In its degree; from love which blends with love 
Heart answering heart, to that which spends it- 
self 
In silent, mad idolatry of some 
Pre-eminent mortal, some great soul of souls, 
Which ne'er will know how well it is' adored. 
Love is never blind, but rather 
Alive to even the minutest spot 
That mars its object, and which Hate (suppressed 
So vigilant and searching) dreams not of. 



July 15. 
Alas, from the beginning love is whole 
And true: if sure of naught beside, most sure 
Of its own truth at least; nor may endure 
A crowd to see its face, that cannot know 
How hot the pulses throb its heart below. 
While its own helplessness and utter want 
Of means to worthily ministrant 
To what it worships, do but fan the more 
Its flame, extol the idol far before 
Itself as it would have it ever be. 

sordello. 

July 16. 

Had I gone 
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit 



142 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING, 

To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now 

'My sole concern to exculpate myself, 

End things or mend them, — why, I could not 

choose 
A humbler mood to wait for that event! 
No, no, there needs not this: no, after all, 
At most I have performed my share of the tasks ; 
The rest is God's concern: mine, merely this, 
To know that I have obstinately held 
By my own work. 

Paracelsus. 



July 17. 
What's poetry except a power that makes? 
And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, 
Pressing them into its service; so 
That who sees painting, seems to hear so well 
The speech that's proper for the painted month; 
And who hears music, feels his solitude 
Peopled at once — for how count heart-beats 

plain 
Unless a company, with hearts which beat. 
Come close to the musician, seen or no? 
And who receives true verse at eye or ear, 
Takes in (with verse) time, place, and person, 

too, 
So, links each sense on its sister-sense, 
Grace-like : and what if but one sense of three 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 143 

Front you at once? The sidelong pair conceive 
Through faintest touch of finest finger-tips, — 
Hear, see and feel, in faith's simplicity, 
Alike, what one was sole recipient of: 
Who hears the poem, therefore, sees the play. 
Balaustion's Adventure. 



July 18. 
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty; nor 
good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an 
hour — 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
earth too bard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
in the sky. 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
bard; 
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it 

^ ^' Abt Vogler. 



July 19. 
Your stained and drooping vines their grapes 
bow down, 



144 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their 

fruit. 
That apple-tree, with a rare after-birth 
Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among! 
Then for the winds — what winds that ever raved 
Shall vex that ash which overlooks you both, 
So proud it wears its berries? Ah, at length. 
The old smile meet for her, the lady of this 
Sequestered nest! This kingdom, limited 
Alone by one old populous green wall 
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies. 
Gray crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, 
Each family of the silver-threaded moss — 
Which, look through, this way, and it appears 
A stubble-field or a cane-break, a marsh, 
Of bulrush whitening in the sun; laugh now! 
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house, 
Looking out, wondering at the world — or best, 
Yon painted snail, with his gay shell of dew, 
Traveling to see the glossy balls high up 
Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps. 

Paracelsus. 



July 20. 

Man shrivels to naught 
If matched with symbols of immensity; 
Must quail, forsooth, before a quiet sky 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 145 

Or sea, too little for their quietude; 

And, truly, somewhat in Sordello's mood 

Confined its speciousness, while we slow sank 

Down the near terrace to the farther bank. 

And only one spot left from out the night 

Glimmered upon the river opposite — 

A breadth of watery heaven like a bay, 

A sky-like space of water, ray for ray, 

And star for star, one richness where they mixed 

As this and that wing of an angel, fixed. 

Tumultuary splendors folded in 

To die. SORDELLO. 



July 21. 

What's a star? 
A world, or a world's sun: doesn't it serve 
As taper also, transpierce, weather-glass. 
And almanac? Are stars not set for signs 
When we should shear our sheep, sow corn, 

prune trees? 
The Bible says so. 

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium." 



See a word how it severeth! 

Oh, power of life and death 

In the tongue, as the Preacher saith! 

A Lover's Quarrel. 



146 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

July 22. 
Having regard to immortality 
No less than life — did that which head and heart 
Prescribed my hand, in measure with its means 
Of doing — used my special stock of power — 
Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone, 
But every sort of helpful circumstance, 
Some problematic and some nondescript: 
All regulated by the single care 
r the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve 
The when and how, toiled where was need, re- 
posed 
As absolutely at the proper point. 
Braved sorrow, counted joy, just to one end: 
Namely, that just the creature I was bound 
To be, I should become, nor thwart at all 
God's purpose in creation. I conceive 
No other duty possible to man, — 
Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law 
By which to judge life failure or success; 
What folk call being saved or cast away. 

Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 



July 23. 
All through my keys that gave their sounds to 
a wish of my soul, 
All through my soul that praised as its wish 
flowed visibly forth, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 147 

All through music and' me! For think, had I 
painted the whole, 
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the pro- 
cess so wonder-worth; 
Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect 
proceeds from' cause. 
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how 
the tale is told; 
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to 
laws, 
Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list 
enrolled. 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will 
that can, 
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, 
lo, they are! 
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be 
allowed to man. 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
sound, but a star. 
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself 
is naught: 
It is everywhere in the world — ^loud, soft, and 
all it said. 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my 
thought : 



148 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And there! ye have heard and seen; consider 
and bow the head ! 

Abt Vogler. 

July 24. 
But Thou 
Forgivest — so forgive these passionate thoughts 
Which come unsought and will not pass away! 
I know thee, who hast kept my path, and made 
Light for me in the darkness, tempting sorrow 
So that it reached me like a solemn joy: 
It were too strange that I should doubt thy love. 
Paracelsus. 

Get you behind the man I am. now, you man 
that I used to be! ^^^^^^ r^^p^^ 



July 25. 
Let us not always say, 
"Spite of this flesh today 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the 
whole!" 

As the bird wings and sings, 
Let us cry "All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than 
flesh helps soul!" 

\ 
Therefore I summon age 
To grant youth^s heritage, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 149 

Life's struggle having so far reached its term: 
Thence shall I pass, approved 
A man, for aye removed 
From the developed brute ; a God though in the 
germ. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



July 26. 
When the singers Hft up their voice, 

And the trumpets made endeavor. 
Singing, "In God rejoice!" 
Saying, "In Him rejoice 

Whose mercy endureth forever!" 

When the Temple filled with a cloud. 
Even the House of the Lord; 

Porch bent and pillar bowed: 
For the presence of the Lord, 

In the glory of his cloud, 

Has filled the House of the Lord. 

Epilogue. 



July 27. 
But where will God be absent? In his face 
Is light, but in his shadow healing, too; 
Let Guido teach the shadow and be healed! 
The Ring and the Book. 



ISO THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Best love of all 
Is God's: then why not have God's love befall 

PippA Passes. 



Myself? 



July 28. 
The gray sea and the long black land; 
And the yellow half-moon large and low; 
And the startled little waves that leap 
In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 

f 
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 
Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
And blue spurt of a lighted match. 
And a voice less loud, though its joys and fears, 
Then the two hearts beating each to each! 

Meeting at Night. 

July 29. 
How should this earth's life prove my only 

sphere? 
Can I so narrow sense but that in life 
Soul still exceeds it? Pauline. 



And Michael's face 

Still wears that quiet and peculiar light 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 151 

Like the dim circlet floating 'round a pearl! 

Paracelsus. 

July 30. 
A sphere is but a sphere; 
Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here; 
Since to^ the spirit's absoiluteness all 
Are alike. Sordello. 



Man's work is to labor and learn — 

As best he may — earth here with heaven. 

Pacchiarotti. 

July 31. 
Is it true that we are now, and shall be here- 
after. 
But what and where depends on life's minute? 
Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter 

Our first step out of the gulf or in it? 
Shall man, such step within his endeavor, 

Mian's face, have no more play and action 
Than joy which is crystallized forever, 
Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? 

Old Pictures in Florence. 



We mortals cross the ocean of this world 
Each in his average cabin of a life: 
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow room. 
Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



152 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



AUGUST. 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That twany Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind. 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side. 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heliotrope. 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 

Whittier. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 153 

August i. 
Now what should this be for? The sun*s de- 
cline 
Seems as he lingered lest he lose some act 
Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact 
Like thunder from the safe sky's sapphirine 
About to alter earth's conditions, packed 
With fate for nature's self that waits, aware 
What mischief unsuspected in the air 
Menaces momently a cataract. 
There it is that yonder space extends 
Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree, 
Shrub, need well-nigh; they keep their bounds, 

leave free 
The platform for what actors? Foes or fri'ends. 
Here come they trooping silent; heaven suspends 
Purpose the while they range themselves. I see! 
Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree 
This present and no after-contest ends 
One or the other's grasp at rule in reach 
Over the race of man — host fronting host. 
As statue statue fronts — wrath-molten each, 
Solidified by hate, — earth halved almost. 
To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes 
Show prominent, each from the universe 
Of minions round about him, that disperse 
Like cloud obstruction when a blot escapes. 
Who flames first? Macedonian, is it thou? 



154 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Aye, and who fronts thee, King Darius, drapes 
His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow. 

Parleyings. 

August 2. 
God spoke, and gave us the word to keep: 
Bid men fold the hands in sleep 
'Mid a faithless world, — ^at watch and ward. 
Till Christ at the end relieve our guard. 

Holy-Cross Day. 

True, I thank God, I ever said "you sin," 
When a man did sin if I could not say it, 
I glared at him: if I could not glare it, 
I prayed against him: then my part seemed over. 
God's may begin yet: so it will, I trust. 

A Soul's Tragedy. 



August 3. 

Youth ended, I shall try 
My gain or loss thereby; 
Be the fire ashes, what survives is gold: 
And I shall weigh the same. 
Give life its praise or blame: 
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being 
old. 

For note, when evening shuts, 
A certain moment cuts 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 155 

The deed off, calls the glory from the gray; 
A whisper from the west 
Shoots — add this to the rest, 
Take it and try its worth : Here dies another day. 
Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

August 4. 
Dante once prepared to paint an angel: 
Whom to please? you whisper, "Beatrice!" 
While he mused and traced it and retraced it, 
(Peradventure with a pen corroded 
Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, 
When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked, 
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, 
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 
Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 
Dante, who loved well because he hated. 
Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 
Dante standing, studying his angel, — 
In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 
Says he — "Certain people of importance" 
(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 
"Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet," 
Says the poet — ''then I stopped my painting." 

VI. 
You and I would rather see that angel, 



156 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
Would we not? — than read a fresh Inferno. 

VII. 

You and I will never see that picture. 
While he mused on love and Beatrice, 
While he softened o'er his outlined angel. 
In they broke, those "people of importance;" 
We and Bice bear the loss forever. 

One Word More. 

August 5. 
Humanity's mishap; the wrinkled brow, bald 

pate, 
And rheumy eyes of Age, peaked chin and parch- 
ment chap, 
Were signs of day-work done, and wage-time 

near, — mayhap 
Merely; but, Age reduced to simple greed and 

guile, 
Worn apathetic else as some smooth slab, ere- 

while 
A clear-cut man-at-arms i' the pavement, till 

foot's tread 
Effaced the sculpture, left the stone you saw 

instead', — 
Was not that terrible beyond the mere uncouth? 
Well, and perhaps the next revolting you was 

Youth, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 157 



Stark ignorance and crude conceit, half smirk, 

half stare 
On that frank fool-face, gay beneath its head ot 

hair 
Which covers nothing. 

FiFINE AT THE i^AIR. 



August 6. 
iSo what is there to smile or frown at? 
What is left us, save in growth 
Of soul, to rise up, far past both. 
From the gift looking to the Giver, 
And from the cistern to the River, 
And from the infinite to Infinity? 
And from man's dust to God's divinity? 

Christmas-Eve. 

August 7. 
Believe— and our whole argument breaks up. 
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat; 
Only we can't command; fire and life 
Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree: 
And be it a mad dream or God's very breath, 
The fact's the same,— belief's fire, one in us, 

Makes of all else mere stuflf to show itself; 

We penetrate our life with such a glow 

As fire lends wood and iron. 

Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



158 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

August 8. 
An angel warns me, too, 
Man should be humble; you are very proud; 
And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for 
such! 

Paracelsus. 



But the soul is not the body: and the breath is 

not the flute: 
Both together make the music; either marred, 

and all is mute. 

La Saisiaz. 



August 9. 
The love: of peace, care for the family, 
Contentment with what's bad but might be 

worse — 
Good movements these! and good, too, discon- 
tent, 
So long as that spurs good, which might be best. 
Into becoming better, anyhow. 

Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 



Savage I was sitting in my house late, lone; 

Dreary, weary with the long day^s work; 
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone: 

Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a 
Turk; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 159 

When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry, 
Half a pang and all a rapture, there again 
were we! — _ „ 

FiFINE AT THE tAIR. 



August 10. 
Of a Power above you still 
Which, utterly incomprehensible, 
Is out of rivalry, which thus you can 
Love, though unloving all conceived by man — 
What need! And of — none the minutest duct 
To that out — nature, naught that would instruct 
And so let rivalry begin to live — 
But of a Power its representative 
Who, being for authority the same. 
Communication different, should claim 
A course, the first chose but this last revealed — 
This Human clear, as that Divine concealed — 
What utter need ! „ 

SORDELLO. 



August ii. 

Gone you were, and I shall never see that 
earnest face again 

Grow transparent, grow transfigured with the 
sudden light that leapt 

At the first word's provocation, from the heart- 
deeps where it slept. 



i6o THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

You supposed that few or none had known and 
loved you in the world; 

Maybe! flower that's full blown tempts the but- 
terfly, not flower that's furled. 

But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed' 
the sheath and let expand 

Bud to bell and outspread flower-shape at tha 
least warm touch of hand 

— Maybe, throb of heart, beneath which — quick- 
ening farther than it knew — 

Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange 
and unguessed hue. 

Disembosomed, re-embosomed, — must one 
memory suffice, 

Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside 
named Edelweiss? 



La Saisiaz. 



August 12. 
See how bright St. Saviour's spire 
Flames in the sunset, all its figures quaint, 
Gay in the glancing light; you might conceive 

them 
A troop of yellow-vested white-haired Jews 
Bound for their own land where redemption 

^^w"^- Paracelsus. 



My perfect wife, my Leonor, 

Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine, too, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. i6i 

iWhom else could I look backward for, 

With whom beside should I dare pursue 
The path gray heads abhor? 

By the Fireside. 



August 13. 

Up I sprang alive, 
Light in me, light without me, everywhere 
Change! A broad yellow sunbeam was let fall 
From heaven to earth, — a sudden drawbridge 

lay. 
Along which marched a myriad merry motes, 
Mocking the flies that crossed them and re- 
crossed 
In rival dance, companions new-born, too. 
On the house-eaves, a dripping shag of weed 
Shook diamonds on each dull gray lattice-square. 
As first one, then another bird leapt by. 
And light was off, and lo, was back again, 
Always with one voice, — where are two such 

joys? — 
The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth, 
Stood on the terrace, — o'er the roofs, such sky! 
The Ring and the Book. 



August 14. 
The prize is in the process: knowledge means 
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat 



t62 thoughts from BROWNING. 

That victory is somehow still to reach, 
But love is victory, the prize itself. 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



Somehow, no one ever plucked 
A rag, even, from the body of the Lord, 
To wear and mock with, but, despite himself, 
He looked the greater and was the better. 

The Ring and the Book. 



August 15. 
Such fancy might have tempted him be false, 
But this man chose truth and was wiser so. 
He recognized that for great minds i' the world. 
There is no trial like the appropriate one 
Of leaving little minds their liberty 
Of littleness to blunder on through life. 
Now aiming at right ends by foolish means. 
Now, at absurd achievement through the aid 
Of good and wise endeavor — to acquiesce 
In folly's life-long privilege, though with power 
To do the little minds the good they need, 
Despite themselves, by just abolishing 
Their right to play the part and fill the place 
I' the scheme of things He schemed who made 

alike 
Great minds and little minds saw use for each. 

Saviour of Society. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 163 

August 16. 
With me, youth led — I will speak now, 

No longer watch you as you sit 
Reading by firelight, that great brow 

And the spirit-small hand propping it 
■Mutely — my heart knows how — 

When if I think but deep enough. 

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; 

And you, too, find without a rebuff 

The response your soul seeks many a time 

Piercinsr its fine flesh-stuff — „ t- 

* By the Fireside. 

August 17. 

We must never part. 
Are we not halves of one dissevered world 
Whom this strange chance unites once more? 

Part? Never! 

Till thou, the lover, know: and I, the knower. 

Love — until both are saved. ^ 

Paracelsus. 



Better have failed in the high aim, as I, 
Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed. 

The Inn Album. 

August 18. 

So, still within this life. 
Though lifted o'er its strife. 



1 64 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 
"This rage was right i' the main, 
That acquiescence vain: 

The Future I may face now I have proved the 
Past. 

For more is not reserved 

To man, with soul just nerved 
To act tomorrow what he learns today; 

Here, work enough to watch 

The Master work, and catch 
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true 

P^^y- Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



August 19. 

Type needs antitype; 
As night needs day, as shine needs shade, 

so good 
Needs evil; how were pity understood 
Unless by pain? 

Parleyings. 



Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold! 

James Lee's Wife. 



August 20. 
— In youth I looked to these very skies. 
And probing their immensities, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 165 

I found God there, his visible power; 
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
Of the power, an equal evidence 
That his love, there, too, was the nobler dower. 
For the loving worm within its clod 
Were dimmer than a loveless god 
Amid his worlds, I will dare say. 
You know what I mean : God's all, man's naught. 
Christmas-Eve. 

August 21. 
Pure faith indeed — ^you know not what you ask! 
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, 
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much 
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. 
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare, 
Some think. Creation's meant to show him faith; 
I say it's meant to hide him all it can, 
And that's what all the blessed evil's for. 
Its use in Time is to environ us, 
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough 
Against that sight till we can bear its stress. 
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain 
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart 
Less certainly would wither up at once 
Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. 
But time and earth case-harden us to live, 
The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child 



i66 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, 
Plays on and grows to be a man like us. 
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief 
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot 
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. 
Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



August 22. 

Today 
Takes in account the work of yesterday; 
Has not the world a Past now, its adept 
Consults ere he dispense with or accept 
New aids? 

SORDELLO. 



Let things be, not seem; 

I counsel rather, do, and nowise dream! 

Parleyings. 



August 23. 
Man must be fed 
With angels' food, forsooth; and some few 

traces of a diviner nature which looks out 
Through his corporeal baseness, warrant him 
In a supreme contempt of all provision 
For his inferior tastes — some straggling marks 
Which constitute his essence, just as truly 
As here and there a gem would constitute 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 167 



The rock, their barren bed, one diamond. ^ 
But were it so— were man all mind— he gains 
A station little enviable. Froni God 
Down to the lowest spirit ministrant, 
Intelligence exists which casts our mind 
Into immeasurable shade. No, no; 
Love, hope, fear, faith— these make humanity; 
These are its signs and note and character. 

. Paracelsus. 

August 24. 
As life wanes, all its care and strife and toil 
Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees ^ 
Which grew by our youth's home, the wavmg 

mass 
Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, 
The morning swallows with their songs like 

words, 
All these seem clear and only with our 

thoughts; 
So, aught connected with my early lite, 
My rude songs or my wild imaginings, 
. How I look on them— most distant amid 
' The fever and the stir of after years! 

Pauline. 

August 25. 

One friend in that path shall be, 
To secure my steps from wrong; ^^__ 



1 68 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

One to count night or day for me, 
Patient through the watches long, 
Serving most with none to see. 

A Serenade at the Villa. 



God uses us to help each other so, 

Lending our minds out. t- t 

° Fra Lippo Lippi. 

August 26. 
Prognostics told 

Man's near approach; so in man's self arise 

August anticipations, symbols, types 

Of a dim splendor ever on before 

In that eternal circle life pursues. 

For men begin to pass their nature's bound, 

And find new hopes and cares which fast sup- 
plant 

Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too 
great 

For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which 
fade 

Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while 
peace 

Rises within them ever more and more. 

Paracelsus. 

All work was fighting — every harm — defeat, 
And every joy obtained — a victory! 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 169 

August 27. 
Venice seems a type 
Of Life — 'twixt blue and blue extends a stripe. 
As Life, the somewhat, hangs 'twixt naught and 

naught ; 
Tis Venice and 'tis Life. Sordello. 



Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it, *'Italv." 



De Gustibus. 



That man believes in Florence as a saint 
Tied to the wheel believes in God. Luria. 



August 28. 
Here is earth's noblest, nobly garlanded — 
Her bravest champion with his well-won prize — 
Her best achievement., her sublime amends 
For countless generations fleeting fast 
And followed by no trace; the creature-god 
She instances when angels would dispute 
The title of her brood to rank with them. 
Angels, this is our angel! Those bright forms 
We clothe with purple, crown and call to thrones 
Are human, but not his; those are but men 
Whom other men press round and kneel before; 
Those palaces are dwelt in by mankind; 
Higher provision is for him you seek 



I70 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Amid our pomps and glories ; see it here ! 
Behold earth's paragon! Now, raise thee, clay! 

Paracelsus. 

August 29. 
One great aim, like a guiding star above — 
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to 

lift 
His manhood to the height that takes the prize; 
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth 
He rashly springs to seize it — nor remote, 
So that he rests upon his path content. 
But the faint circlet prophesies the orb, 
He see so much as, just evolving these, 
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength, 
To due completeness, will suffice this life. 
And lead him at his grandest to the grave. 
After this star, out of a night he springs; 
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones 
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he 

mounts. 
Nor, as from each to each exultingly 
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy. 
This for his own good. Colombe's Birthday. 



August 30. 
As peace returned, I sought out some pursuit; 
And song rose, no new impulse but the one 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 171 

With which all others best could be combined. 
My life has not been that of those whose heaven 
Was lampless save where poesy shone out; 
But as a clime where glittering mountain tops 
And glancing sea and forests steeped in light 
Give back reflected the far-flashing sun; 
For music (which is earnest of a heaven, 
Seeing we know emotions strange by it, 
Not else to be revealed,) is like a voice, 
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend. 
To the green woods in the gay summer time; 
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes 
Which have made painters pale, and they go on 
Till stars look at them and minds call to them 
As they leave life's path for the twilight world 
Where the dead gather. This was not at first; 
For I scarce knew what I would do. I had 
An impulse but no yearning — only sang. 

Pauline. 

August 31. 

As it were better, youth 

Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
Toward making, than repose on aught found 
made ; 

So better, age, exempt 

From strife, should know, than tempt 
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death, nor be 
afraid ! 



172 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Enough now, if the Right 
And Good and Infinite 
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine 
own, 

iWith knowledge absolute, 
Subject to no dispute 
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee 
feel alone. 

Be there, for one and all. 
Severed great minds from small. 

Announced to each his elation in the Past! 
Was I, the world arraigned, 
Were they, my soul disdained, 

Right? Let age speak the truth and give us 

peace at last! 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 173 



SEPTEMBER. 

O earth ! thou hast not any wind which blows 

That is not music. Every weed of thine, 

Pressed rightly, flows in aromatic wine ; 

And every humble hedgerow flower that grows. 

And every little brown bird that doth sing. 

Hath something greater than itself, and bears 

A loving word to every living thing — 

Albeit it holds the message unawares. 

All shapes and sounds have something which is not 

Of them. A spirit broods amid the grass ; 

Vague outlines of the everlasting thought 

Lie in the melting shadows as they pass; 

The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills 

The breezes of the sunset and the hills. 

Sometimes — we know not how, nor why, nor whence — 

The twitter of the swallows 'neath the eaves. 

The shimmer of the light amid the leaves, 

Will strike up thro' the thick roofs of our sense, 

And show us things which seers and sages saw. 

In the gray earth's green dawn something doth stir, 

Like organ hymns within us, and doth awe. 

Richard Realf^ in Christian Work. 



1 74 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

September i. 
The day's adventures for the day suffice — 
Its constant tribute of perceptions strange, 
With sleep and stir in healthy interchange, 
Suffice, and leave him for the next at ease 
Like the great palmer-worm that strips the trees, 
Eats the life out of every luscious plant, 
And, when September finds them sere or scant. 
Puts forth two wondrous winglets, alters quite, 
And hies him after unforeseen delight. 

SORDELLO. 

As the adventurous spider, making light 

Of distance, shoots her threads from depth to 

height, 
From barbican to battlement, so flung 
Fantasies forth and in their center swung 
Our architect, — the breezy morning fresh 
Above, and merry, — all his waving mesh 
Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged. 

SoRDELLO. 

September 2. 
My heart will have it he speaks true! My blood 
Beats close to this Tiburzio as a friend. 
If he had stept into my watch-tent, night 
And the wild beast desert full of foes around, 
I should have broke the bread and given the 
salt, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 175 



Secure, and, when my hour of watch was done, 

Taken my turn to sleep between his knees 

Safe in the untroubled brow and honest cheek. 

Oh world, where all things pass and naught 
abides, 

Oh life, the long mutation — is it so? 

Is it with life as with the body's change? 

— Where, e'er though better follow, good must 
pass. 

Nor manhood's strength can mate with boy- 
hood's grace. 

Nor age's wisdom, in its turn, find strength. 

But silently the first gift dies away 

And though the new stays, never both at once. 

LURIA. 

September 3. 
What, then the long day dies at last? Abrupt 
The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt 
Our mountain-ridge, is mastered; black the belt 
Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt, 
Barriers again the valley, lets the flow 
Of lavish glory waste itself away 
— Whither? For new climes, fresh eyes break 

the day! 
Night was not to be baffled. If the glow were 
All that's gone from us ! Did clouds, afloat 



176 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

So filmily but now, discard no rose, 

Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows 

A sullen uniformity. I note 

Rather displeasure, — in the overspread 

Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead 

Oppressive to malevolence, — than late 

Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate 

Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate 

Its passion and partake in relics red 

Of day's bequeathment; now a form instead 

Estranges, and affrights who needs must face 

On and on till his journey ends; but where? 

Caucasus? Lost now in the night. Away 

And far enough lies that Arcadia. 

The human heroes tread the world's dark way 

No longer. Yet I dimly see almost — 

Yes, for my last adventure! 'Tis a ghost. 

So drops away the beauty. There he stands 

Voiceless, scarce stirs with deprecating hands. 



Parleyings. 



September 4. 
What imports 
Fasting or feasting? Do thy day's work, dare 
Refuse no help thereto, since help refused 
Is hindrance sought and found. 

Ferishtah's Fancies. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 177 

"Let Time fulfil his task, 
And, tin the scythe-sweep find no obstacle. 
Let man be patient ?'' 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



September 5. 
A painful trial, very sore, was yours; 
All that could draw out, marshal in array 
The selfish passions 'gainst the public good — 
Slights, scorns, neglects, were heaped on you 

to bear; 
And ever you did bear and bow the head! 
It had been sorry trial, to precede 
Your feet, hold up the promise of reward 
For living gleam; your footsteps kept the track 
Through death and doubt; take all the light at 

once ! 
Trial is over, consummation shines; 
Well have you served, as well, henceforth, com- 
mand! 



LURIA. 



September 6. 
I leaned on the turf, 
I looked at a rock 
Left dry by the surf; 

For the turf, to call it grass were to mock; 
Dead to the roots, so deep was done 
The work of the summer sun. 



178 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And the rock lay flat 

As an anvil's face: 

No iron like that! 

Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace: 

Sunshine outside, but ice at the core, 

Death's altar by the lone shore. 

On the turf sprang gay 

With his films of blue, 

No cricket. I'll say, 

But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too. 

The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight, 

Real fairy, with wings all right, 
i 

On the rock they scorch 

Like a drop of fire 

From a brandished torch, 

Fall two red fans of a butterfly : 

No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead, 

See, wonderful blue and red! 

Is it not so 

With the minds of men? 

The level and low. 

The burnt and bare, in themselves ; but then 

With such a blue and red grace, not theirs, — 

Love settling unawares! 

On the Cliff. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 179 

September 7. 
Where is the use of the lips' red charm, 
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, 
And the blood that blues the inside arm — > 

Unless we turn, as the soul knows how. 
The earthly gifts to an end divine? 
A lady of clay is as good, I trow. 

The Statue and the Bust. 



September 8. 
Everywhere — 

Sorrow, the heart must bear, 
Sits in the home of each, companions there, 
M'any a circumstance, at least. 
Touches the very breast. 
For these, 

Whom any sent away — he knows: 
And in the live man's stead, 
Armour and ashes reach 
The house of each. 

Agamemnon. 

September 9. 

All my soul breaks forth 
How I do love you . 

Let me know you mine, 
Prove you mine, write my name upon your 
brow. 



i8o THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Hold you and love you, and then die away 
If God please, with completion in my soul ! 

In A Balcony. 

September io. 
Dante, pacer of the shore 
Where glutted hell disgortheth filthiest gloom 
Unbitten by its whining sulphur spume — 
Or where the grieved and obscure waters slope 
Into darkness quieted by hope: 
Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye 
In gracious twilight where His chosen lie. 

sordello. 

September ii. 
Be sure they sleep not whom God needs! Nor 

fear 
Their holding light His charge, when every hour 
That finds that charge delayed is a new death. 
This for the faith in which I trust. 

Paracelsus. 



But my fact is, 
'Tis one thing to know and another to practise, 
And thence I conclude, that the real God func- 
tion 
Is to furnish a motive and injunction 
For practising what we know already. 

Christmas-Eve. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. i8i 

September 12. 
Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 

And the little less, and what worlds away ! 
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, 

Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, 
And life be a proof of this. 

Had she willed it, still had stood the screen 
So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her; 

I could fix her face with a guard between, 
And find her soul as when friends confer. 

Friends — lovers that might have been. 

By the Fireside. 

September 13. 
What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture? 
This: No artist lives and loves, that longs not 
Once, and only once, and for one only, 
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language 
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 
Being nature that's an art to others. 
Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 
Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 
None but would forego his proper dowry, — 
Does he paint? He fain would write a poem, — 
Does he write? He fain would paint a picture. 
Put to proof art alien to the artists, 
Once, and only once, and for one only, 



1 82 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



So to be the man and leave the artist, 
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 

One Word More. 



September 14. 
And she is gone; sweet human love is gone; 
'Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels 
Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day 
Beside you, and lie down at night by you 
Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep, 
And all at once they leave you, and you know 

them. „ 

Paracelsus. 



September 15. 
The Tower of Hate is outgrown, far and strange; 
A transitory shame of long ago. 
It dies into the sand from which it sprung: 
But thine. Love's rock built Tower, shall fear 

no change; 
God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, 
When all the morning-stars together sang. 

Helen's Tower. 



God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that. 

Paracelsus. 



Oh, I should fade — 'tis willed so! Might I save, 
Gladly I would, whatever beauty gave 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 183 

Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too. 

It is not to be granted. But the soul 

Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that 

whole ; 
Vainly the flesh fades: soul makes all things 

new. 

Any Wife to Any Husband. 



September 16. 
Let us, O my dove, 
Let us be unabashed of soul. 
As earth lies bare to heaven above! 
How is it under our control 
To love or not to love? 

Two IN A Campagna. 



Oh, to love less what one has injured! Dove, 
Whose pinions I have rashly hurt, my breast — 
Shall my heart's warmth not nurse thee into 

strength? 
Flower I have crushed, shall I not care for thee? 
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 



September 17. 
I shall never, in the years remaining. 
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 
Make you music that should all-express me; 
So it seems: I stand on my attainment. 



i84 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

This of verse alone, one life allows me, 
Verse and nothing else have I to give you 
Other heights in other lives, God willing; 
All the gifts from all the heights, you own, 

Love' 

One Word More. 



September i8. 
Let my hand — this hand — lie in your own, my 

own true friend! 
Hand and hand with you. 

Paracelsus. 



Have you a friend to count on? 
One sure friend. 

LURIA. 



September 19. 
Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's. 
Oh, lark, be day's apostle 
To mavis, merle and throstle. 
Bid them their betters jostle 
From day and its delights! 
But at night, brother owlet, over the woods, 
Toll the world to thy chantry ; 
Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods 
Full complimes with gallantry: 
Then, owls and bats, 
Cowls and twats. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 185 

Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods 
Adjourn to the owl-stump pantry! 

PippA Passes. 



September 20. 
Do not the dead v/ear flowers when dressed for 

God? 
Say — I am all in flowers from head to foot! 
Say — not one flower of all he said and did, 
Might seem' to flit unnoticed, fade unknown, 
But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree 
Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place 
At this supreme of moments. 

The Ring and the Book. 



A touch divine — 
And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod. 
Visibly through His garden walketh God. 

sordello. 

September 21. 
A sudden little river crossed my path 
As unexpected as a serpent comes. 
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms ; 
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath 

For the fiend's glowing hoof — 'to see the wrath 
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spume. 



1 86 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

So petty, yet so spiteful! All along, 
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; 
Drenched willows flung- them headlong in a fit 
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: 
The river which had done them all the wrong, 
Whatever that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. 



September 22. 
Autumn has come like Spring returned to us, 
Won from her girlishness: like one returned 
A friend that was a lover, nor forgets 
The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts, 
Of fading years;, whose soft mouth quivers yet 
With the old smile, but yet so changed and still! 

Pauline. 



What joy is better than the news of friends 
Whose memories were a solace to me oft, 
As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight! 

Paracelsus. 



September 23. 
Sun! all the heaven is' glad for thee: what care 
If lower mountains light their snowy phares 
At thine effulgence, yet acknowledge not 
The source of day? Their theft shall be their 
bale : 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 187 

For after ages shall retrack thy beams, 

And put aside the crowd of busy ones 

And worship thee alone — the master-mind, 

The thinker, the explorer, the creator! 

Then, who would sneer at the convulsive throes 

With which thy deeds were born, would scorn as 

well 
The sheet of winding subterraneous fire 
Which, pent and writhing, sends no less at last 
Huge islands up amid the simmering sea. 
Behold thy might in me! Thou hast infused 
Thy soul in mine, and I am grand as thou, 
Seeing I comprehend thee — I so simple, 
Thou so august. I recognize thee first; 
I saw thee rise, I watched thee early and late, 
And though no glance reveal thou dost accept 
My homage — thus no less I proffer it. 
And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest. 

Paracelsus. 

September 24. 
How he stands 
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair 
Which turns to it as if they were akin; 
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue 
Nearly set free, so far they rise above 
The painful, fruitless stirring of the brow 
And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set 



i88 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

In slow despondency's eternal sigh! 
Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the 
cause? 



Paracelsus. 



September 25. 
There was a lull in the rain, a lull 
In the wind, too; the moon was risen, . 
And would have shone pure and full. 
But for the ramparted cloud-prison, 
Block on block built up in the West, 
For what purpose the wind knows best, 
Who changes his mind continually. 
And the empty other half of the sky 
Seemed in the silence as if it knew 
What, any moment, might look through 
A chance gap in that fortress massy; 
Through its fissures you got hints 
Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints. 
Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy 
Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, 
Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow. 
All a-simmer with intense strain 
To let her through, — then blank again. 
All the hope of her appearance failing. 

Christmas-Eve. 

September 26. 
Love, you saw me gather men and women. 
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 189 

Enter each and all, and use their service, 
Speak from every mouth — the speech, a poem. 
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving: 
I am mine and yours — ^the rest be all men's, 
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 
Let me speak this once in my true person, 
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea, 
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: 
Pray you, look on these, my men and women, 
Take and keep my fifty poems finished; 
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! 
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. 

One Word More. 



September 27. 
Not on the vulgar mass 
Called "work," must sentence pass. 
Things done, that took the eye and had the 
price ; 

O'er which, from level stand. 
The low world laid its hand, 
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a 
trice. 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb. 
So passed in making up the main account; 



190 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the 
man's amount. 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act. 
Fancies that broke through language and es- 
caped ; 

All I could never be, 
All, men ignored in me, 
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
pitcher shaped. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



September 28. 

I would I could adopt your will. 

See with your eyes, and set my heart 

Beating by yours, and drink my fill 
At your soul's springs, — your part my part 

In life, for good and ill. 

No. I yearn upward, I touch you close. 
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek. 

Catch your soul's warmth, — I pluck the rose 
And love it more than tongue can speak — 

Then the good minute goes. 

Two IN A Campagna. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 191 

September 29. 
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all; 
But the night's black was burst through by a 

blaze — 
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned 

and bore, 
Through her whole length of mountain visible; 
There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 

The Ring and the Book. 



September 30. 
Oh, moment, one and infinite! 

The water slips o'er stock and stone. 
The West is tender, hardly bright: 

How gray at once is the evening grown — 
One star, its Chrysolite! 



We two stood there with never a third. 
But each by each, as each knew well; 

The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, 
The lights and the shades made up a spell 

Till the trouble grew and stirred. 

By the Fireside. 



192 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



OCTOBER. 

Aye, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, 

And the year smiles as it draws near its death. 

Wind of the sunny South! oh, still delay- 
In the gay woods and in the golden air, 
Like to a good old age released from care ; 

Journeying, in long serenity, away. 

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I 

Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks, 
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, 

And music of kind voices ever nigh. 

And when my last sand twinkled in the glass, 

Pass silently from men as thou dost pass. 

William Cullen Bryant. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 193 

October i. 
Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, 
This Autumn morning! How he sets his bones 
To bask i' the sun, and thrust out knees and feet 
For the ripple to run over in its mirth, 
Listening the while, where the sea-lark twitters 

sweet. 
This is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; 
Such is life's trials, as old earth smiles and 

knows. 
If you loved only what were worth your love, 
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you. 
Make the low nature better by your throws! 
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above! 

James Lee's Wife. 

October 2, 
A turn and we stand at the heart of things. 

The woods are round us, heaped and dim; 
From slab to slab how it slips and springs, 

The thread of water, single and slim. 
Through the ravage some torrent brings! 

Does it feed the little lake below? 

That speck of white just on its marge 
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow. 

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge 
When Alps meet heaven in snow. 



194 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

On our other side is the straight-up rock, 
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it 

By boulder-stones where litchens mock 
The marks on a math, and small ferns fit 

Their teeth to the polish block. 

By the Fireside. 



October 3. 
Love, if you knew the light 
That your soul casts on my sight, 
How I look to you 
For the good and true. 
And the beauteous and the right. 

A Lover's Quarrel. 



For mankind springs 
Salvation by each hindrance interposed; 

October 4. 
As for grass, it grew as scant as hair 
In leprosy: thin dry blades pricked the mind 
Which underneath looked kneaded up with 

blood. 
One stifif blind horse, his bone a-stare. 
Stood stupefied, however he came there. 

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 195 

It's not worth having, such imperfect faith, 
No more available to do faith's work 
Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith or none! 
Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



October 5. 
Yes, every body that leaves life sees all 
Softened and bettered ; so with other sights : 
To me at least was never evening yet 
But seemed far beautifuller than day, 
For past is past. 

The Ring and the Book. 



Though the whole earth might lie in wickedness, 
We had the truth, might leave the rest to God. 
A Death in the Desert. 



October 6. 
The year 
Began to find its early promise sere 
As well. Thus beauty vanishes; thus stone 
Outlingers flesh; nature's and his youth gone, 
They left the world to you, and wished you joy. 
When, stopping his benevolent employ, 
A presage shuddered through the welkin; harsh 
The earth's remonstrance followed. 'Twas the 

marsh 
Gone of a sudlden. Mincio, in its palace, 



196 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Laughed, a broad water, in next morning's face, 
And, where the mists broke up immense and 

white 
r the steady wind, burned like a spHth of Hght 
Out of the crashing of a myriad of stars. 

SORDELLO. 



October 7. 
What matters happiness? 
Duty! There's man's one moment. This is 



yours! 



King Victor and King Charles. 



Duty done is the soul's fireside. 



October 8. 
My own, see where the years conduct! 

At first, 'twas something our two souls 
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked 

Into each now; on, the new stream rolls, 
Whatever rocks obstruct. 

Think, when our one soul understands 

The great Word which makes all things new- 

When earth breaks up and Heaven expands — 
How will the change strike me and you 

In the house not made with hands? 

By the Fireside. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 197 

October 9. 
How soon a smile of God can change the world! 
How we are made for happiness — how work 
Grows play, adversity a winning fight! 

In A Balcony. 

My business is not to remake myself, 
But make the absolute best of what God made. 
Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



October 10. 
Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth 
And love; and as one just escaped from death 
Would bind himself in bands of friends to feel 
He lives indeed, so, I would lean on thee! 
Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom 
If such must come, but chiefly when I die. 
For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark 
To fight a giant : but live thou forever, 
And be to all what thou hast been to me! 
All in whom this wakes pleasant thoughts of me 
Know my last state is happy, free from doubt 
Or touch of fear. Love me and wish me well. 

Pauline. 

October ii. 

Fve a Friend over the sea; 

I like him, but he loves me. 

It all grew out of the books I write, 



198 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

They find such pleasure in his sight 
That he slaughters you with savage looks 
Because you don't admire my books. 

Time's Revenge. 

A healthy spirit Hke a healthy frame 
Craves aliment in plenty — all the same, 
Change, assimilate^ its aliment. ^, 

October 12. 

Pray, does Luther dream 
His arguments convince by their own force 
The crowds that own his doctrine? No, indeed! 
His plain denial of established points 
Ages had sanctified and men supposed 
Could never be oppugned while earth was under 
And heaven above them — points which chance or 

time 
Affected not — did more than the array 
Of argument which followed. Boldly deny! 
There is much breath-stopping, hair-stiffening 
Awhile; then, amazed glances, mute awaiting 
The thunderbolt which does not come : and next, 
Reproachful wonder and inquiry; those 
Who else had never stirred, are able now 
To find the rest out for themselves, perhaps 
To outstrip him who set the whole at work, 
— As never will my class its instructor 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 199 

And you saw Luther? 

'Tis a wondrous soul! 

True: the so-heavy chain which galled mankind 

Is shattered, and the noblest of us all 

Must bow to the deliverer — nay, the worker 

Of our own project — ^we who long before 

Had burst our trammels, but forgot the crowd, 

We should have taught; still groaned beneath 

their load: 

This he has done and nobly. 

Paracelsus. 



October 13. 

For God above 
Is great to grant, as mighty to make. 

And creates the love to reward the love; 
I claim you still for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 

Through worlds I shall traverse not a few; 
Much to learn, much to forget. 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 

Evelyn Hope. 

October 14. 

Truths escape 
Time's insufficient garniture; they fade, 
They fall — those sheathings now grown sere, 

whose aid 
Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine 



200 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And free through March frost; May dews crys- 
talline 
Nourish truth merely, — does June boast the fruit 
As — not new venture merely, but, to boot. 
Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall 
Myth after myth — ^the husk-like lies I call 
New truth's corrolla — safeguard: Autumn 

comes, 
So much the better. 

Parleyings. 

October 15. 
As when the martin migrates; Autumn claps 
Her hands, cries "Winter's coming, will be here, 
Off with you ere the white teeth overtake! 
Flee!" So I fled. 

The Ring and the Book. 



Clairveaux in Autumn is restorative . 

All the same 
Clairvaux looked grayer than a month ago. 
Unglossed was shrubbery, unglorified 
Each copse, so wealthy once, the garden-plots, 
The orchard-walks, showed dearth and dreari- 
ness. 
The sea lay out at distance crammed by cloud 
Into a leaden wedge; and sorrowful 
Sulked field and pasture with persistent rain. 

Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 201 

October 16. 

I know a Mount the gracious Sun perceives 
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves 
The world; and, vainly favored, it repays 
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze 
By no change of its large calm front of snow. 
And underneath the Mount a Flower I know, 
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever 
At his approach; and, in the lost endeaor 
To live his life, has parted one by one, 
With all a flower's true graces, for the grace 
Of being but a foolish mimic sun, 
With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. 
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount 
As over many a land of theirs its large 
Galm front of snow like a triumphal targe 
Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names 

vie 
Each to its proper praise and own accord; 
Men call the Flower the Sunflower, sportively. 

RUDEL TO THE LaDY OF TRIPOLI. 



October 17, 
Time for rain ! for your long hot dry Autumn 

Had net-worked with brown 
The white skin of each grape on the branches. 

Marked like a quail's crown. 



202 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Those creatures you make such account of, 

Whose heads, — speckled white 
Over brown like a great spider's back. 

As I told you last night, — 
Your mother bites off for her supper 

Red-ripe as could be, 
Pomegranates were chapping and splitting 

In halves on the tree: 
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone, 

Ot in the thick dust 
On the path, or straight out of the rock-side, 

Wherever could thrust 
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower 

Its yellow face up. 
For the prize were great butterflies fighting 

Some five for one cup. 

The Englishman in Italy. 



October i8. 
I took you — ^how could I otherwise? 

For a world to me, and more; 
For all, love greatens and glorifies 
Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes, 

In what was mere earth before. 

And such as you were, I took you for mine; 

Did not you find me yours. 
To watch the olive and wait the vine, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 203 



And wonder when rivers of oil and wine 
Would flow, as the Book assures? 

James Lee's Wife. 

October 19. 
Love, we are in God's hand 
How strange now looks the life He makes us 

lead, 
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 
I feel He laid the fetter; let it lie! 

Andrea del Sarto. 

Save him, dear God! It will be like thee: bathe 

him 
In light and life! ^ Paracelsus. 

October 20. 
What if, alone in the domain of light, 
Thou miss the accustomed signs, remark eclipse? 
Shalt thou still gaze on ground nor lift a hd,— 
Steady in thy superb prerogative, 
Thy inch of inkling,— nor once face the doubt. 
Is the sphere above thee, darkness to be felt? 
The Ring and the Book. 



October 21. 
That Autumn eve was stilled: 
A last remains of sunset dimly burned 
O'er the far forests, like a torch-flarne turned 



204 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

By the wind back upon its bearer's hand 
In one long flare of crimson ; as a brand, 
The woods beneath lay black. 



SORDELLO. 



Autumn wins your best by its mute 
Appeal to sympathy for its decay. 

Paracelsus. 

October 22. 

Round as the wild creatures, overhead the tree, 
Underfoot the moss-tracks, — life and love with 

these! 
I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers. 
All the long lone summer-day, that greenwood 

life of ours! 

Rich-pavilioned, rather, — still the world with- 
out, — 

Inside — gold-roofed silk-walled silence round 
about ! 

Queen it thou in purple,— I, at watch and ward, 

Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, 
love's guard! 

So for us no world? Let throngs press thee to 

me! 
Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we! 
Welcome, squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful 

face! 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 205 



God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should 
souls have place. f^rishtah's Fancies. 



October 23. 
And what a world for each 
Must somehow be i' the soul,— accept that mode 

of speech, — 
Whether an aura gird the soul, wherein it seems 
To float and move, a belt of all the glints and 

gleams 
It struck from out that world, its weaklier fellows 
So dead and cold; or whether these not so much 

surround 
As pass into the soul itself, add worth to worth, 
As mine enriches blood, and straightway send it 

forth. 
Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity, 
That's battle without end. ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ P^^^ 



October 24. 
For he was slipping into years' apace 
And years make men restless-^hey need must 

spy 
Some certainty, some sort of end assured, 
Some sparkle, though from topmost beacon-top 
That warrants life a harbor through the haze. 
The Ring and the Book. 



2o6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years; 
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? 

The Bishop Orders His Tomb. 



October 25. 

I will be happy if but for once : 

Only help me, Autumn weather, 
Me and my cares to screen, ensconce 

In luxury's sofa-lap of leather! 

Sleep? Nay, comfort — with just a cloud 
Suffusing day too clear and bright; 

Eve's essence, the single drop allowed 
To sully, like milk, noon's water-white. 

Let gauziness shade, not shroud — adjust, 
Dim and not deaden, — somehow sheathe 

Aught sharp in the rough world's busy thrust, 
If it reach me through dreaming's vapor- 
wreath. 

Be life so, all things ever the same! 

For, what has disarmed the world? Outside, 
Quiet and peace: inside, nor blame 

Nor want, nor wish whate'er betide. 

What is it like that has happened before? 
A dream? No dream, more real by much. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 207 

A vision? But fanciful days of yore 

Brought many: mere musing seems not such. 

i 
Perhaps but a memory, after all! 

— ^Of what came and when a woman leant 
To feel for my brow where her kiss might fall. 
Truth ever, truth only the excellent ! 

Dubiety. 



October 26. 
The Monastery called Convertites, 
Meant to help women because these helped 

Christ, — 
A thing existent only while it acts, 
Does asi designed, else a nonentity, — 
For what is an idea unrealized? — 
Pompilia is consigned to these for help. 
They do help ; they are prompt to testify 
To her pure life and saintly dying days. 
She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves 

rich! 

The Ring and the Book. 



October 27. 
See this soul of ours! 
How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed 
In manhood, clogged in sickness, back compelled 
By age and waste, set free at last by death; 



2o8 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Why is it flesh enthralls it or enthrones? 
What is this flesh we have to penetrate? 

^^^__ Paracelsus. 

Rejoice that man is hurled 

From change to change unceasingly; 

His soul's wings never furled! 

James Lee's Wife. 



A wound i' the flesh no doubt wants prompt re- 
dress; 

It smarts a little today, well in a week, 

Forgotten in a month, or never, or now, revenge! 

But a wound to the soul? That rankles more 
and more! 



October 28. 
By this, we roll the clouds away 
Of precedent and custom, and at once 
Bid the great beacon-light God sets in all. 
The conscience of each bosom shine upon 
The guilt, of Strafiford; each man lay his hand 
Upon his breast and judge. 



October 29. 
No, when the fight begins within himself, 
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his 
head, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 209 

Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — 
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through life! 
Never leave growing till the life to come! 

Bishop Bloughram's Apology. 



Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for? 

Andrea del Sarto. 



October 30. 
Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 
That metaphor! and feel 
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, — 
Thou, to whom fools propound, 
When the wine makes its round, 
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, 
seize today!" 

Fool! All that is, at all. 

Lasts ever, past recall; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 

What entered into thee, 

That was, is, and shall be: 
Time's wheel runs back or steps : Potter and clay 

endure. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



2IO THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

October 31. 
Then life is — to wake not sleep, 

Rise and not rest, but press 
From earth's level where blindly creep 

Things perfected, more or less, 
To the heaven's height, far and steep. 

Where, amid what strifes and storms 

May wait the adventurous guest, 
Power is Love — transports, transforms 

V lie aspired from worst to best. 
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'. 

1 have faith such end shall be; 

From the first, Power was — I knew. 
Liif has made clear to me 

That, strive but for closer view. 
Love were as plain to see. 

When see? When there dawns a day. 

If not on the homely earth. 
Then yonder, worlds away, 

Where the strange and new have birth, 
And Power comes full in play. 

ASOLANDO. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 211 



NOVEMBER. 

Who said November's face was grim? 

Who said her voice was harsh and sad? 
I heard her sing in wood-paths dim, 

I met her on the shores so glad, 
So smiling, I could kiss her feet. 
There never was a month so sweet. 

October's splendid robes, that hid 
The beauty of the white-limbed trees. 

Have dropped in tatters; yet amid 
Their perfect forms the gazer sees 

A proud wood-monarch here and there, 

Garments of wine-dipped crimson wear. 

In precious flakes the autumnal gold 

Is clinging to the forest's fringe; 
Yon bare twig to the sun will hold 

Each separate leaf, to show the tinge 
Of glorious rose-light reddening through 
Its jewels, beautiful as few. 

Where short-lived wild flowers bloomed and died, 

The slanting sunbeams fall across 
Vine 'broideries, woven from side to side. 

Above mosaics of tinted moss. 
So does the Eternal Artist's skill 
Hide beauty under beauty still. 

And if no note of bee or bird 
Through the rapt stillness of the woods 

Or the sea's murmurous trance be heard, 
A presence in these solitudes 



212 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Upon the spirit seems to press 
The dew of God's dear silences. 

And if, out of some inner heaven, 

With soft relenting, comes a day 
Whereto the heart of June is given, 

All subtle scents and spicery 
Through forest crypts and arches steal 
With power unnumbered hurts to heal. 

Lucy Larcom. 

November i. 
How well I know what I mean to do 

When the long dark autumn evenings come;! 
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? 

With the music of all thy voice, dumb 
In life's November, too! 

I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 

O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, 

While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, 
And I turn the page, and I turn the page, 

Not verse now, only prose! 

By the Fireside. 



November 2. 
Oh, the sense of the yellow mountain-flovv^ers, 

And thorny balls, each three in one, 
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers! 

For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun. 
These early November hours, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 213 

That crimson the creeper's leaf across 
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, 

O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, 
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped 

Elf-needled mat of moss. 

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged. 

Last evening — nay, in today's first dew, 
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged. 

Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew 
Of toadstools peep indulged. 

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge 
That takes the turn to a range beyond. 

Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge 
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond 

Danced over by the midge. ^^ ^^^ Fireside. 



November 3. 
I. . 
Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, 

ere thou speak, 
Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, 

and did kiss his cheek. 
And he: "Since the King, O my friend, for thy 

countenance sent. 
Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until 

from his tent 



214 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Thou return with the joyful assurance the King 

liveth yet, 
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the 

water be wet. 
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of 

three days, 
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of 

prayer nor of praise. 
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended 

their strife. 
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks 

back upon life. 

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's 

child with his dew 
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still 

living and blue 
Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as 

if no wild heat 
Were now raging to torture the desert!" g 

November 4. 
II. 

Then I, as was meet, 
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose 

on my feet, 
And ran o'er the sands burnt to powder. The 
tent was unlooped; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 215 

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under 

I stooped; 
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all 

withered and gone, 
That extends to the second inclosure, I groped 

my way on 
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then 

once more I prayed. 
And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was 

not afraid 
But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And 

no voice replied; 
At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but 

soon I descried 
A something more black than the blackness — ^the 

vast, the upright 
Main prop which sustains the pavilion, and slow 

into sight 
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of 

all, 
Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent- 
roof, showed Saul. 
He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms 

stretched out wide 
On the great cross-support in the centre, that 

goes to each side; 
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there, as, 

caught in his pangs 



2i6 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And waiting his change, the king-serpent all 
heavily hangs 

Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliver- 
ance come 

With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear 
and stark, blind and dumb. 

Saul. 

November 5. 

III. 

Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we 

twine round our chords 
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — 

those sunbeams like swords! 
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, 

as, one after one, 
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding 

be done. 
They are white and untorn, by the bushes, for 

lo, they have fed 
Where the long grasses stifle the water within 

the stream's bed; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star 

follows star. 
Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue and 

so far! 
— Then the tune for which quails on the corn- 
land will each leave his mate 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 217 

To fly after the player; then, what makes the 

crickets elate 
Till for boldness they fight one another; and 

then, what has weight 
To set the quick jerbon a-m using outside his 

sand house — 
There are none such as he for a wonder, half 

bird and half mouse! 
God made all the creatures and gave them our 

love and our fear. 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one 

family here. 

Saul. 

November 6. 

IV. 

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their 

wine-song, when hand 
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 

and great hearts expand 
And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — 

And then, the last song 
When the dead man is praised on his journey — 

"Bear, bear him along, 
With his few faults shut up' like dead flow'rets! 

Are balms seeds not here 
To console us? The land has none left such as 

he on the bier. 



21 8 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

O, would we might keep thee, my brother!" — 
And then, the glad chaunt 

Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, 
next, she whom we vaunt 

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — ^And 
then, the great march 

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and but- 
tress an arch 

Naught can break; who shall harm them, our 
friends? Then, the chorus intoned 

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory en- 
throned. 

But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul 
groaned. 

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, 
and listened apart; 

And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: 
and sparkles 'gan dart 

From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once 
with a start, 

All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies cour- 
ageous at heart. 

So the head; but the body still moved not, still 
hung there erect. 

And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it 
unchecked, 

As I sang: — 

Saul. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 219 

November 7. 

V. 

"O, our manhood's prime vigor! no spirit feels 

waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew 

unbraced. 
O, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock 

up to rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, 

the cool silver shock 
Of a plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of 

the bear. 
And the sultriness showing the lion is crouched 

in his lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with 

gold dust divine. 
And the locust-flesh steep in the pitcher, the full 

draught of wine, 
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where 

bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly 

and well. 
How good is man's Hfe, the mere living! How 

fit to employ 
AH the heart and the soul and the senses forever 

in joy! 
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, 

whose sword thou didst guard 



220 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for 

glorious reward? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, 

held up as men sung 
The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear 

her faint tongue 
Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one 

more attest. 
I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, 

and all was for best'? 
Then they sung through their tears in strong 

triumph, not much, but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and) the contest, the 

working whence grew 
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the 

spirit strained true: 
And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of 

wonder and hope. 
Present promise and wealth of the future beyond 

the eye's scope, — 
Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch, a people is 

thine; 
And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on 

one head combine! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love 

and rage (like the throe 
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and lets 

the gold go), 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING, 



221 



High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame 
crowning them, — all 

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature- 
King &«!!" SAUt. 

November 8. 

VI. 

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,-heart, hand, 

harp and voice, 
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each 

bidding rejoice 
Saul's fame in the light it was made for-as 

when, dare I say, . . 

The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strams 
through its array, ..c,„ii» 

And upsoareth the cherubim^chanot- Saul! 

cried I, and stopped. 
And waited the thing that should follow. Then 

Saul, who hung propped 
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was 

struck by his name. 
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons 

goes right to the aim, 
And somie mountain, the last to withstand her, 

that held (he alone, 
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) 
on a broad breast of stone 



222 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

A year's snow bound about for a breastplate — 

leaves grasp of the sheet? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously 

down to his feet, 
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, 

your mountain of old. 
With his rents, the successive bequeathing of 

ages untold — ■ 
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each 

furrow and scar 
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — 

all hail, there they are ! 
— Now again to be softened with verdure, again 

hold the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat with its young to 

the green on its crest 
For their food in the ardors of summer. One 

long shudder thrilled 
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank 

and was stilled 
At the King's self left standing before me, re- 
leased and aware. 
What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 

'twixt hope and despair, 
Death was past, life not come; so he waited. 

Awhile his right hand 
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant 

forthwith to remand 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 223 

To their place what new objects should enter: 

'twas Saul as before. 
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor 

was hurt any more 
Than by slow pallid sunsets in Autumn, ye watch 

from the shore, 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's 

slow decline 
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'er- 

lap and entwine 
Base with base to knit strength more intently; 

so, arm folded arm 
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 
Saul. 

November 9. 
VII. 
What spell or what charm, 
(For awhile there was trouble within me,) what 

next should I urge, 
To sustain him, where song had restored him? — 

iSong filled to the verge 
His cup with the wine of this Hfe, pressing all 

that it yields 
Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: 

beyond, on what fields. 
Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to 
brighten the eye 



2 24 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them 

the cup they put by? 
He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not; he lets 

one praise life. 
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 

Then fancies grew rife, 
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when 

round me the sheep 
Fed in silence — alone, the one eagle wheeled 

slow as in sleep; 
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world 

that might lie 
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strife 'twixt 

the hill and the sky ; 
And I laughed — "Since my days are ordained to 

be passed with my flocks. 
Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains 

and the rocks. 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and 

image the show 
Of mankind as they live in those fashions I 

hardly shall know! 
Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the 

courage that gains. 
And the prudence that keeps what men strive 

for." And now these old trains 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 225 

Of vague thought came again; I grew surer, so, 

once more the string 
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as 

thus — e 

Saul. 



November 10. 
VIII. 

"Yea, my King," 
I began — thou dost well in rejecting mere com- 
forts that spring 
From the mere mortal life held in common by 

man and by brute; 
In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our 

soul it bears fruit. 
Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,^ — how 

its stem trembled first 
Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then 

safely outburst 
The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest 

when these, too, in turn, 
Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; 

yet more was to learn. 
E'en the good that comes in with the palm fruit. 

Our dates shall we slight. 
When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or 

care for the plight 
Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced 

them? Not so! stem and branch 



226 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while 

the palm wine shall stanch 
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I from 

thee such wine 
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit 

be thine! 
By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou 

still shalt enjoy 
M'ore indeed, than at first when inconscious, the 

life of a boy. 
Crush that life, and behold its wine running! 

Each deed thou hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until 

e'en as the sun 
Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil 

him, though tempests efface, 
Can find nothing his own deed produced not, 

must everywhere trace 
The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each 

ray of thy will, 
Hvery flash of thy passion and prowess, long 

over, shall thrill 
The whole people, the countless, with ardor, till 

they, too, give forth 
A like cheer to their sons, who, in turn, fill the 

South and the North 
With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 227 

Carouse In the past! 

But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at 
last: 

As the lion when age dims his eyeball the rose 
at her height, 

So with man — so his power and his beauty for- 
ever take flight. 

No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! 
Look forth o'er the years! 

Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; 
begin with the seers ! 

Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his 
tomb — bid arise 

A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, 
till, built to the skies. 

Let it mark where the great First King slum- 
bers: whose frame would ye know? 

Up above see the rock's naked face, where the 
record shall go 

In great characters cut by the scribe, — ^Such was 
Saul, so he did; 

With the sages directing the work, by the popu- 
lace chid, — 

For not half, they'll af!irm, is comprised there! 
Which fault to amend. 

In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, 
whereon they shall spend 



228 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their 

praise, and record 
With the gold of the graver, Saul's story — the 

statesman's great word 
Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The 

river's a-wave 
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other 

when prophet-winds rave; 
So the pen gives unborn generations their due 

and their part 
In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank 

God that thou art ! 

Saul. 

November ii. 

IX. 

And behold while I sang .... but O 

Thou who didst grant me that day, 
And before it not seldom hast granted thy help 

to essay, 
Carry on and complete an adventure, — my shield 

and my sword 
In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy 

word was my word, — 
Still be with me, who then at the summit of 

human endeavor 
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, 

gazed hopeless as ever 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 229 

On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, 

mighty to save, 
Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance — 

God's throne from man's grave! 
Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice 

to my heart 
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels 

last night I took part, 
As this morning I gather the fragments, alone 

with my sheep, 
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like 

sleep! 
For I make in the gray dewy covert, while 

Hebron upheaves 
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, 

and Kidron retrieves 
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 

Saul. 

November 12. 
X. 

I say, then, — my song 
While I sang thus, assuming the monarch, and 

even more strong 
Made a profi'er of good to console him — ^he 

slowly resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right 
hand replumed 



230 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

His black locks to their wonted composure, ad- 
justed the swathes 
Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his 

countenance bathes, 
He wipes off with the robe, and he girds now 

his loins as of yore, 
And feels slow for the armlets of pine, with the 

clasp set before. 
He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had 

bent 
The broad brow from the daily communion; and 

still, though much spent 
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the 

same, God did choose, 
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, 

never quite lose. 
So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by 

the pile 
Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he 

leaned there awhile, 
And sat out my singing, — one arm 'round the 

tent-prop, to raise 
His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I 

touched on the praise 
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man 

patient there; 
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then 

first I was 'ware 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 231 

That he sat, as I say, with my head just above 

his vast knees 
Which were thrust out on each side around me, 

Hke oak roots which please 
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked 

up to know 
If the best I could do had brought solace; he 

spoke not, but slow 
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 

with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my 

brow ; through my hair 
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back 

my head, with king power — 
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do 

a flower. 
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 

scrutinized mine — 
And O, all my heart how it loved him! but where 

was the sign? 
I yearned — "Could I help thee, my father, invent- 
ing a bliss, 
I would add, to that life of the past, both the 

future and this; 
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, 

ages hence, 
As this present, — had love but the warrant, love's 

heart to dispense!" Saul. 



232 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

November 13. 
XL 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — 
no song more! outbroke — 

I have gone the whole round of creation; I saw 
and I spoke; 

I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, re- 
ceived in my brain 

And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — 
returned him again 

His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I 
saw; 

I repeat, as a man may of God's work — all's 
love, yet all's law. 

Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each 
faculty tasked 

To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a 
dewdrop was asked. 

Have I knowledge? confounded it shines at wis- 
dom laid bare. 

Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, 
to the Infinite Care! 

Do I task any faculty highest; to image success? 

I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more 
and no less, 

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is 
seen God 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 233 

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul 

and the clod. 
And thus looking within and around me, I ever 

renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending 

upraises it, too,) 
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's 

all-complete, 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to 

his feet. 
Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity 

known, 
I shall dare to discover some promise, some gift 

of my own. 
There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to 

hoodwink, 
I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I 

think), 
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, not ye, 

I worst 
E'en the Giver in one gift — Behold, I could lose 

if I durst! 
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may 

o'ertake 
God's own speed in the one way of love I abstain 

for love's sake. 
— What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? 

When doors great and small, 



234 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Nine-and-ninety flew ope at an touch, should the 
hundred appall? 

In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 
greatest of all? 

Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ulti- 
mate gift, 

Do I doubt that his own love can compete with 
it? Here, the parts shift? 

Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the end, 
what Began? 

Saul. 



November 14. 

xn. 

Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for 
this man, 

And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who 
yet alone can? 

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare 
will, much less power. 

To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the mar- 
velous dower 

Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make 
such a soul. 

Such a body, and then such an earth for in- 
sphering the whole? 

And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 
attest 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 235 

These good things being given, to go on, and 
give one more, the best? 

Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, main- 
tain at the height 

This perfection, — succeed with Hfe's day-spring, 
death's minute of night? 

Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the 
mistake, 

Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and 
bid him awake 

From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to 
find himself set 

Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 
harmony yet 

To be run and continued, and ended — who 
knows — or endure! 

The man taught enough by lifers dream, of the 
rest to make sure. 

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensi- 
fied bliss. 

And the next world's reward and repose, by the 
struggle in this. 

Saul. 

November 15. 
XIII. 
I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I 
who receive: 



236 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to 

believe. 
All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as 

prompt as my prayer 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these 

arms to the air. 
From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, 

thy dread Sabbaoth: 
I will? — the mere atom.s despise me! Why am 

I not loth 
To look that, even that, in the face, too? Why is 

it I dare 
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What 

stops my despair? 
This, — 'tis not what man does which exalts him, 

but what man would do ! 
See the King — I would help him but cannot, the 

wishes fall through. 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow 

poor to enrich, 
To fill up his life, stave my own out:, I would — 

knowing which, 
I know that my service is perfect. O speak 

through me now! 
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst 

thou — so wilt thou ! 
(So shall crown thee the topmost, inefifablest, 

uttermost crown — 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 237 



And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 

nor down , t • u 

One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by 

no breath . . . 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins 

issue with death! 
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be 

proved . 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being 

Beloved! 
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest 

shall stand the most weak. 
Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my 

flesh, that I seek ^ o 1 •* 

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it 

shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a man 

like to me. 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever; a Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! 

See the Christ stand! 

Saul. 

November 16. 
XIV. 
I know not too well how I found my way home 
in the night. 



238 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

There were witnesses, cohorts about me to left 

and to right, 
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, 

the aware: 
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as 

strugglingly there, 
As a runner beset by the populace famished for 

news — 
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, 

hell loosed with her crews; 
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and 

tingled and shot 
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; 

but I fainted not. 
For the Hand still impelled me at once and sup- 
ported, suppressed 
All tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy 

behest. 
Till the rapture was shut in itself and the earth 

sank to rest. 
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered 

from earth — 
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's 

tender birth; 
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of 

the hills; 
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the 

sudden mind thrills; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 239 

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each 
with eye sidling still 

Though averted with wonder and dread; in the 
birds stiff and chill, 

That rose heavily, as I approached them, made 
stupid with awe; 

E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — ^he felt 
the new law. 

The same stared in the white humid faces up- 
turned by the flowers; 

The same worked in the heart of the cedar and 
moved the vine-bowers: 

And the little brooks witnessing murmured per- 
sistent and low. 

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — e'en 

so, it is so! ^ 

Saul. 



November 17. 

Was not Elisha once? 
Who bade them lay his staff on a corpse-face, 
There was no voice, no hearing: he went in 
Therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, 
And prayed unto the Lord; and he went up 
And lay upon the corpse, dead on the couch , 
And put his mouth upon its mouth his eyes 
Upon its eyes, his hands upon its hands. 
And stretched him on the flesh; the flesh waxed 
warm: 



240 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

And he returned, walked to and fro the house, 
And went up, stretched him on the flesh again. 
And the eyes opened. 'Tis a credible feat 
With the right man and way. 

The Ring and the Book. 



November i8. 
Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining 
hope, 
Means recognizing fear ; the keener sense 
Of all comprised within our actual scope 

Recoils from aught beyond earth's dim and 
dense. 
Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope 
Henceforward among groundlings? That's 
offence 
Just as indubitably; stars abound 
O'erhead, but then — what flowers make glad the 
ground ! 

The Two Poets of Croisir. 



November 19. 
Well, early in Autumn, at first winter-warning, 
When the stag had to break with his foot of a 

morning, 
A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice 
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice, 
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 241 

And another and another, and faster and faster. 
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled. 
The Flight of the Duchess. 



All service, therefore, rates 

Alike, nor serving one part, immolates 

The rest: but all in time. 

sordello. 

November 20. 
Look not thou down but up! 
To uses of a cup. 
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, 
The new wine's foaming flow, 
The Master's lips aglow! 
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst 
thou with earth's wheel? 

But I need, now as then. 

Thee, God, who mouldest men; 
And since, not even while the whirl was worst. 

Did I — to the wheel of life 

With shapes and colors rife, 
Bound dizzily — ^mistake my end, to slake thy 
thirst! 

So, take and use thy work; 
Amend what flaws may lurk. 



242 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

What strain o' the stuff what warpings past the 
aim! 

My times be in thy hand! 
Perfect the cup as planned! 
Let age approve of youth, and death complete 
the same. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



November 21. 

I liken to this play o' the body — fruitless strife 
To sHp the sea and hold the heaven — my spirit's 

life 
'Twixt false, whence it would break, and true, 

where it would bide, 
I move it, yet resist; am up-borne every side 
By what I beat against, an element too gross 
To live in, did not soul duly obtain her dose 
Of Hfe-breath, and inhale from truth's pure pleni- 
tude 
Above her, snatch and gain enough to just illude 
With hope that some brave bound may baffle 

evermore 
The obstructing medium, make who swarm 

henceforward soar: 
— Gain scarcely snatched when, foiled by the very 

effort, souse. 
Underneath ducks the soul, her truthward yearn- 
ings dowse 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 243 

Deeper in falsehood! Ay, but fitted less and less 

To bear in nose and mouth old briny bitterness. 

Proved alien more and more; since each experi- 
ence proves 

Air — ^the essential good, not sea, wherein who 
moves 

Must thence, in the act, escape, apart from will 
or wish; 

Move a mere hand to take water — need, jelly- 
fish, 

Upward you tend! And yet our business with 
the sea 

Is not with air, but just o' the water, watery; 

We must endure the false, no particle of which 

Do we acquaint us with, but up we mount a 
pitch 

Above it, find our head reach truth, while hands 
explore 

The false below; so much while here we bathe, — 
no more. 

FiFINE AT THE FaIR. 



November 22. 
Oh, how will your country show next week, 

When all the vine-boughs 
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture 

The mules and the cows? 
Last eve I rode over the mountains; 



244 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Your brother, my guide, 
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles 

That offered, each side. 
Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious, — 

Or strip from the sorbs 
A treasure or, rosy and wondrous. 

Those hairy gold orbs! 
But my mule picked his sure sober path out. 

Just stopping to neigh 
When he recognized down in the valley 

His mates on their way 
With the faggots and barrels of water; 

And soon we emerged 
From the plain, where the woods could scarce 
follow; 

And still as we urged 
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us. 

As up we still trudged. 
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant. 

And place was e'en grudged 
'M'id the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones 

Like the loose broken teeth 
Of some monster which climbed there to die 

From the ocean beneath — 
(Place was grudged to the silver-gray fume-need 

That clung to the path, 
And dark rosemary ever a-dying 

That 'spite the wind's wrath, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 245 

So loses the salt rock's face to seaward, 

And lenticks as stanch 
To the stone where they root and bear berries, 

And . . . what shows a branch 
Coral-colored, transparent, with circlets 

Of pale sea-green leaves; 
Over all trod my mule with the caution 

Of gleaners o'er sheaves, 
Still, foot after foot like a lady, 

Till, round after round, 
He climbed to the top of Calvano, 

And God's own profound 
Was above me, and round me the mountains, 

And under, the sea. 
And within me my heart to bear witness 

What was and shall be. 

The Englishman in Italy. 



November* 2:^. 

To know 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape. 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly 
The demonstration of a truth, its birth, — 
And you trace back the efBuence to its spring 
And source within us: where broods radiance 
vast, 



246 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

To be elicited, ray by ray, as chance 

Shall favor. ^ 

Paracelsus. 



November 24. 
Such am I: the secret's mine now! 

She has lost me, I have gained her: 
Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, 

I shall pass my life's remainder. 
Life will just hold out the proving 

Both our powers, alone and blended; 
And then, come the next life quickly! 

This world's use will have been ended. 

Cristina. 

November 25. 

He fixed thee 'mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance. 
This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest; 

Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im- 
pressed. 

What though the earlier grooves. 
Which ran the laughing loves 
Around thy base, no longer pause and press? 
What though, about thy rim. 
Skull-things in order grim, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 247 

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner 

stress? T3 o 17 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



November 26. 
Love is the only good in the world 
Henceforth be loved as heart can love, 
Or brain devise, or hand approve. 

The Flight of the Duchess. 



A pretty woman's worth some pains to see, 

Nor is she spoiled, I take it, 

If a crown completes the forehead pale 

And tresses pure. ^ , ^ 

^ CoLOMBE s Birthday. 



There's a woman hke a dew-drop, she's so purer 

than the purest; 
And her noble heart's the noblest, and her sure 

faith's the surest. 



November 27. 
Was it for mere fool's play, make-believe and 
murmuring, 
So we battled it like men, not boylike sulked 
or whipped? 
Each of us heard God's ''Come!" and each was 
coming: 
Soldiers all, to forward-face, not sneaks to lag 
behind ! 



248 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

How of the field's fortune? That concerned our 

Leader! 

Led, we struck our stroke nor cared for doings 

left and right; 

Each as on his sole head, failer or succeeder, 

Lay the blame or lit the praise; no care for 

cowards; fight! 

° Epilogue. 



November 28. 
Shakespeare! — to such name's sounding, what 
succeeds 
Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell, — 
Act follows word, the speaker knows full well. 
Nor tampers with its magic more than needs. 
Two names there are: That which the Hebrew 
reads 
With his soul only; if from lips it fell, 
Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and 
hell. 
Would own "Thou didst create us!" Naught im- 
pedes 
We voice the other name, man's most of might. 

Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love 
Mutely await their working, leave to sight 
All of the issue as — below — above — 
Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove, 
Through dread — this finite from that infinite. 

The Names. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 249 



November 29. 
I know there shall dawn a day 

— Is it here on homely earth? 
Is it yonder, worlds away, 

Where the strange and new have birth, 
That Power comes full in play? 

Is it here with grass about, 

Under befriending trees, 
When shy buds venture out, 

And the air by mild degrees 
Puts winter's death past doubt? 

Is it up amid whirl and roar 

Of the elemental flame 
Which star-flecks heaven's dark floor, 

That, new yet still the same. 
Full in play comes Power once more? 

Somewhere, below, above, 
iS'hall a day dawn — this I know — 

When Power, which vainly strove 
My weakness to o'erthrow, 

Shall triumph. I breathe, I move, 

I truly am, at last! 

For a veil is rent between 
Me, and the truth which passed 



250 THOUGHTS FROM BROV^ NING. 

Fitful, half-grieved, half-seen, 
Grasped at, — not gained, held fast. 

asolando. 

November 30. 
Recorded motion, breath or look of hers. 
Which poured forth would present you one pure 

glass, 
Mirror you plain — as God's sea, glassed in gold, 
His saints — the perfect soul Pompilia? Men, 
You must know that a man gets drunk with truth 
Stagnant inside him! Oh, they've killed her, 

Sirs! 
Can I be calm? ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ 



At eve we heard the Angelus ; she turned — 
"I told you I could neither read nor write. 
My life stopped with the play-time: I will learn. 
If I begin to live again; but you — 
Who are a priest — wherefore do you not read 
The service at this hour? Read Gabriel's song, 
The lesson, and then read the little prayer 
To Raphael, proper for us travellers!" 

The Ring and the Book. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 251 



DECEMBER. 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky. 
The flying cloud, the frosty light : 
The year is dying in the night; 

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. 

Ring out the old, ring in the new. 
Ring, happy bells, across the snow : 
The year is going, let him go; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind. 
For those that here we see no more; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor. 

Ring in redress to all mankind. 

Ring out a slowly dying cause, 
And ancient forms of party strife ; 
Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 
The faithless coldness of the times; 
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, 

But ring the fuller minstrel in. 

Ring out false pride in place and blood. 
The civic slander and the spite ; 
Ring in the love of truth and light. 

Ring in the common love of good. 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 



252 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land. 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

Tennyson. 

December i. 
Heap logs and let the blaze laugh out! 

Paracelsus. 

Praise the good log-fire; Winter howls without. 
Crowd closer let us! ^^^^ ^wo Poets of Croisic. 



December 2. 

'Tis willed so, — That man's life be lived, first to 
last, 

Up and down, through and through — not in por- 
tions, forsooth, 

To pick and to choose from. Our shuttles fly 
fast, 

We are living, not life sole and whole: as age — 
youth, 

So death completes living, shows life in its truth. 

Apollo and the Fates. 

"But time escapes: 
Live now or never !" 

A Grammarian's Funeral. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 253 



December 3- 
At first you say, "The whole, or chief 
Of difficulties, is BeUef." 
Could I believe one thoroughly, 
The rest were simple. What? Am I 
An idiot, do you think,— a beast? 
Prove to me, only that the least 
Command of God is God's, indeed, 
And what injunction shall I need 
To pay obedience? Death so nigh, 
When time must end, eternity 
gegin, — and cannot I compute, 
\yeigh loss and gain together, suit 
My actions to the balance drawn. 
And give my body to be sawn 
Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied 
To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, 
Like any martyr of the list? 
How gladly!— if I made accquist, 
Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, 

Of God's eternity of joy. 

Easter-Day. 



December 4. 
And He, whose eye detects a spark 
Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, 
May well see flame where each beholder 



254 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Acknowledges the embers smolder. 

But I, a mere man, fear to quit 

The clew God gave me as most fit 

To guide my footsteps through life's maze, 

Before Himself discerns all ways 

Open to reach him; I, a man 

Able to mark where faith began 

To swerve aside, till from its summit 

Judgment drops her damning plummet, 

Pronouncing such a fatal space 

Departed from the Founder's base: 

He will not bid me enter, too, 

But rather sit, as now I do, 

Awaiting His return outside. 

— Twas thus my reason straight replied, 

And joyously I turned, and pressed 

The garment's skirt upon my breast. 

Until, afresh its light suffusing me 

That I should wait here lonely and coldly. 

Instead of rising, entering boldly. 

Baring truth's face, and letting drift 

Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? 

Do these men praise Him? I will raise 

My voice up to their point of praise! 

I see the error; but above 

The scope of error, see the love, — 

O, love of those first Christian days ! 

Christmas-Eve. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 255 



December 5- 

Learn one lesson hence 
Of many which whatever lives should teach: 
This lesson, that our human speech is naught, 
Our human testimony false, our fame 
And human estimation words and wmd. 
Whv take the artistic way to prove so much? 
Because, it is the glory and good of Art, 
That Art remains the one way possible 
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least. 
How look a brother in the face and say, 
"Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art 
blind; . . 

Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their 

And oh, the foolishness thou countest faith I 
Say this as silverly as tongue can troll— 
The anger of the man may be endured,^ 
The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him 
Are not so bad to bear— but here's the plague 
That all this trouble comes of telling truth. 
Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false. 
Seems to be just the thing it would supplant. 
Nor recognizable by whom it left: 
While falsehood would have done the work of 
truth. 

But Art, — ^wherein man nowise speaks to men, 



256 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Only to mankind, — Art may tell a truth 
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, 
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate 

word; 
So you may paint your picture, twice show truth, 
Beyond mere imagery on the wall, — 
So, note by note, bring music from your mind, 
Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived, — 
So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, 
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside. 

And save the soul! If this intent save mine, — 
If the rough ore be rounded to a ring. 
Render all duty which good ring should do. 
And, failing grace, succeed in guardianship, — 
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) 
Linking our England to his Italy! 

The Ring and the Book. 



December 6. 
All the breath and the bloom of the year in the 
bag of one bee: 
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the 
heart of one gem: 
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the 
shine of the sea; 
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, 
wealth, and — ^how far above them — 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 257 

Truth, that's brighter than gem, 
Trust, that's purer than pearl, — 
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe — all 
were for me. Sv^i^v^ Bonum. 



December 7. 
No, be man and nothing more — 
Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears, 
And craves and deprecates, and loves, and 

loathes. 
And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes 
And show God granted most denying all. 

Man I am and man would be Love — merest man 
and nothing more. 

Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions — 
let them soar! 

I may put forth angel's plumage, once un- 
manned, but not before. 

Now on earth, to stand suffices, — nay, if kneel- 
ing serves, to kneel: 

Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven 
that earth can feel: 

Sense looks straight, — not over, under, — perfect 
sees beyond appeal. 

Good you are and wise, full circle; what to me 
were more outside? 



258 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Wiser wisdom, better goodness? Ah, such want 

the angel's wide 

Sense to take and hold and keep them! Mine at 

least has never tried. _ , _ 

Ferishtah s Fancies. 



December 8. 
Why? Because all I haply can and do, 
All that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free 
Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few, 
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, 
These shall I bid men — each in his degree 
Also God-guided — bear, and gayly, too? 

But little do or can the best of us: 
That little is achieved through Liberty. 

WTio, then, dares hold, emancipated thus, 
His fellow shall continue bound? Not I, 

Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss 

A brother's right to freedom. That is why. 

Why I Am a Liberal. 

December 9. 
Yet my poor spark had for the source, the sun: 
Thither I sent the great looks which compel 
Light from its fount: all that I do and am 
Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised, 
Remembered or dinned, as mere man may: 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 259 

I know just so, nor otherwise. As I know, 

I speak, — ^what should I know, then, and how 

speak 
Were there a wild mistake of eye or brain 
As to recorded governance above? 
If my own breath, only, blew coal alight 
I styled celestial and the morning star? 
I, who in this world act resolvedly. 
Dispose of men, their bodies and their souls. 
As they acknowledge or gainsay the light 
I show them, — shall I, too, lack courage? — leave 
I, too, the front of me, like those I blame? 
Refuse, with kindred inconsistency. 
To grapple danger whereby souls grow strong? 
I am near the end; but still not at the end; 
All to the very end is trial in life: 
At this stage is the trial of my soul, 
Danger to face, or danger to refuse? 
Shall I dare try the doubt now, or not dare? 

The Ring and the Book, 



December 10. 

I search but cannot see 
What purpose serves the soul that strives, or 

woudn^t, tries 
Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories 
iStay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its 
own 



26o THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Forever, by some mode whereby shall be made 
known 

The gain of every life. Death reads the title 
clear — 

What each soul for itself conquered from out 
things here: 

Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I as- 
sert, — 

And naught i' the world, which, save for soul 
that sees, inert 

Was, is, and woud be ever, — stuflf for transmut- 
ing, — null 

And void until man's breath evoke the beau- 
tiful— 

But, touched aright, promptly yields each particle 
its tongue 

Of elemental flame, — no matter whence flame 
sprung 

From grime and spice, or else from straw and 
rottenness, 

So long as soul has power to make them burn, 
express 

What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only 
ash behind. 

However the chance ; if soul be privileged to find 

Food so soon that, by first snatch of eye, suck of 
breath. 

It can absorb pure ife: or, rather, meeting death 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 261 

r the shape of ugliness, by fortunate recoil 
So put on its resource, it find therein a foil 
For a new birth of life, — the challenged soul's 

response 
To ugliness and death, — creation for the nonce. 

FiFINE AT THE FaiR. 

December ii. 
God has conceded two sights to a man — 
One, of men's whole work, time, completed plan, 
The other, of the minute's work, man's first 
Step to the plan's completeness; what's dis- 
persed 
Save hope of that supreme step which descried 
'Earliest, was meant still to remain untried 
Only to give you heart to take your own 
Step, and there stay — leaving the rest alone? 

SORDELLO. 



The Past indeed 
Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, 
The all-including Future! What were life 
Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife 
Through the ambiguous Present to the goal 
Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul, 
Nothing has been which shall not bettered be 
Hereafter, — leave the root, by law's decree 
Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree! 

Parleyings. 



262 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

December 12. 
P'ear death? to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am Hearing the place. 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe ; 
"WHiere he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 

Yet the strong man must go; 
For the journey is done and the summit attained, 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be 
gained, 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would that death bandaged my eyes, and for- 
bore. 

And bade me creep past. 
No! Let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers. 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's ar- 
rears 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 263 

And the element's rage, the fiend-voices that 
rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
pain, 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again. 
And with God be at rest! 

Prospice. 



December 13. 

Cheer up, — 
Be death with me as with Achilles erst, 
Of Man's calamities the last and worst: 
Take it so! By proved potency that still 
Makes perfect, be assured, come what will, 
What once lives never dies — what here attains 
To a beginning, has no end, still gains 
And never loses aught: When, where, how — 
Lies in Law's lap. What's death then? Even 

now 
With so much knowledge is it hard to bear 
Brief interposing ignorance? Is care 
For a creation found at fault just there — 
There where the heart breaks bond and outruns 

time, 
To reach not follow what shall be? 

Parleyings. 



264 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Death is life, just as our daily, momentarily 
dying body is none the less alive, and ever re- 
cruiting new forces of existence. Without death, 
which is our crape-like, churchyardy word for 
change, for growth, there could be no prolonga- 
tion of that which we call life. For myself, I 
deny death as an end of anything. Never say of 
me that I am dead. 



December 14. 
C thou pale Form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed! 
1 have denied Thee calmly; do I not 
Pant when I read of Thy consummate deeds? 
And burn to see Thy calm pure truths outflash 
The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy? 
Do I not shake to hear aught question 
Thee? 

If I am erring, save me! Madden me! 
Take from me powers and pleasures! Let me 

die 
Ages,— so I see Thee! I am knit round 
As with a chain by sin and lust and pride; 
Yet though my wandering dreams have seen all 

shapes 
Of strange delight, oft have I stood bv 
Thee— 

Have I been keeping lonely watch with 
Thee — 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 265 

In the damp night by weeping OHvet, 
Or leaning on Thy bosom, proudly less, 
Or dying with Thee on the lonely cross, 
Or witnessing Thy bursting from the tomb. 



December 15. 
It was not strange I saw no good in man, 
To overbalance all the wear and waste 
Of faculties, displained in vain, but bom 
To prosper in some better sphere: and why? 
In my own heart love had not been made wise 
To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
To see a good in evil, and a hope 
In ill-success: to sympathize, be proud 
Of their half-reasons, faint uprisings, dim 
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, 
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts:— 
All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
Their error, upward tending although weak. 
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun. 
But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
And do their best to cHmb to him. 

Paracelsus. 

December 16, 
My soul brought all to a single test — 
That he, the Eternal First and Last; 



266 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Who, in his power, had so surpassed 
All man conceives of what is might, — 
Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, 
— Would prove as infinitely good: 
Would never (my soul understood;) 
With power to work all love desires, 
Bestow e'en less than man requires; 
That he who endlessly was teaching, 
Above my spirit's utmost reaching. 
What love can do in the leaf or stone, 
(So that to master this alone, 
I must go on learning endlessly) 
Would never need that I, in turn, 
Should point him out defect unheeded, 
And show that God has yet to learn 
What the meanest human creature needed. 



December 17. 

So my heart be struck, 
What care I, by God's gloved hand or the bare? 
Nor do I much perplex me with aught hard. 
Dubious in the transmitting of the tale; 
No, nor with certain riddles set to solve. 
This Hfe is turning and a passage; pass — 
Still, we march over some fiat obstacle 
We made give way before us; solid truth 
In front of it, what notion for the world? 
The moral sense grows by exercise. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 267 

Tis even as a man grew probatively 
Initiated in Godship, set to make 
A fairer moral world than this he finds, 
Guess now what shall be known hereafter. 

The Ring and the Book. 



December 18. 
For I, a man with men are linked, 
And not a brute with brutes; no gain 
That I experience, must remain 
Unshared; but should my best endeavor 
To share it, fail — subsisteth ever 
God's care above, and I exult 
That God, by God's own ways occult, 
Nay, — doth, I will believe — bring back 



All wanderers to a single track. 



Christmas-Eve. 



December 19. 
Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
P'ound the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 

So much vv^as theirs who so little allowed; 
How all our copper had gone for his service! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been 
proud! 



2 68 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

We that had loved him so, followed him, 
honored him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye. 
Learned his great language, caught his clear 
accents, 
Made him our pattern to live and to die! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
Burns, Shelly, were with us, — they watch from 
their graves! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freeman, 

— He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! 
We shall march prospering, — not through his 
presence; 
Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his qui- 
escence. 
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire; 
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul 
more. 
One task more declined, one more footpath 
untrod; 
One more devil's — triumph and sorrow for 
angels. 
One wrong more to man, one more insult to 
God! 
Life's night begins; let him never come back to 
us! 
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 269 



Forced praise on our part--the glimmer of twi- 
light, . . , 
Never fflad confident mormng agam 
Best fight on well, for we taught hin^stnke 
gallantly, 
Menace our heart ere we master his own , 
Then let him receive the new knowledge and 
wait us, , , , 
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! 

The Lost Leader. 

December 20. 
The mortal whose brave foot 
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far 
That he descries at length the shrine of shrmes, 
Must let no sneering of the demons eyes, 
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now 
Upon him, fairly past their power ; no, no^ 
He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last, 
Having a charm to baffie them; behold, 
He bares his front : a mortal ventures thus 
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms! 

Paracelsus. 

December 21. 
The very God! Think Ahib: canst thou doubt? 
So the All-Great, were the All-Loving, too; ^ 
So' through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, "O, heart I made, a heart beats here! 



2 70 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING, 



Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself. 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of none; 
But love I give thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me, who have died for thee!" 

Epistle of Karshish. 



While, when the scene of life shall shift, 

And the gay heart be taught to ache s 

A sorrow and privation take 

The place of joy — the thing that seems 

Mere misery, under human schemes. 

Becomes, regarded by the light 

As good a gift as joy before. ^ -^ 

December 22. 
Even as a luminous haze links star to star 
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing 
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way 
To be defined save in strange melodies. 
Last, having thus revealed all I could love, 
Having received all love bestowed on it, 
I would die; preserving so throughout my course 
God full on me, as I was full on men; 
He would approve my prayer, I have gone 

through 
The loneliness of life; create for me 
If not for men, or take me to thyself. 
Eternal, infinite love! ' p^,^,^,3„g. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 271 



December 23. 
The world lies under me; and nowhere I detect 
So great a gift as this — God's own — of human 

life. 
Shall the dead praise thee; No! The whole live 

world is rife, 
God, with thy glory, rather! Life, then, God's 

best of gifts. 
For what shall men exchange? For life — when 

so he shifts 
The weight and turns the scale, lets Hfe for life 

restore 
God's balance, sacrifice the less to gain the more. 
Substitute — for low life, another's or his own — 
Life large and liker God's who gave it; thus 

alone 
May Hfe extinguish life that life may trulier be! 
How low this law descends on earth, is not for 

me 
To trace: complexed becom.es the simple, intri- 
cate. 
The plain, when I pursue law's winding. 'Tis the 

straight 
Outflow of law I know and name; to law, the 

fount 
Fresh from God's footstool, friends, follow while 

I remount. 

Ivan Ivanovitch. 



2 72 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

December 24. 

My own East! 
How nearer God we were! He glows above 
With scarce an intervention, presses close 
And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours: 
We feel him, nor by painful reason know! 
The everlasting minute of creation 
Is felt there, now it is as it was then: 
All changes at his instantaneous will. 
Not by the operation of a law 
Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. 
His hand is still engaged upon his world — 
Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer sus- 
pend, 
For is not God all-mighty? To recast 
The world, erase old things and make them new, 
What costs it Him? So, man breathes nobly 
thus? 

LURIA. 



December 25. 

Christ's birthright eve! 
Oh, angels that sang erst "On earth, peace! 
To man good will!" — such peace finds earth to- 
day! 

The Ring and the Book. 



December 26. 
It's wiser being good than bad; 
It's safer being meek than fierce; 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 273 

It's fitter being sane than mad. 

My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 

That, after Last, returns the First, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched; 

That what began best, can't end worst. 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 

Apparent Failure. 



Does the precept run. Believe in Good, 
In Justice, Truth, now understood 
For the first time? — or Believe in Me, 
Who lived and died, yet essentially 
Am Lord of Life? 

Christmas-Eve. 



December 27. 
An end, a rest! Strange how the notion, once 
Encountered, gathers strength by moments! 

Rest! 
Where has it kept so long? This throbbing brow 
To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel 
And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let 

down: 
IMy strung, so high-strung brain, to dare un- 
nerve 
My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place 
My position, my reward, even my failure, 



2 74 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

Assigned, made sure forever! To lose myself 

Among the common creatures of the world, 

To draw some gain from having been a man, 

Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length! 

Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth 

And power and recompense. 

Paracelsus. 



December 28. 
I, then, in ignorance and weakness, 
Taking God's help, have" attained to think 
My heart does best to receive in meekness 
That mode of worship, as most to his mind. 
Where earthly aids being cast behind. 
His All in All appears serene 
With the thinnest human veil between, 
Letting the mystic lamp, the seven. 
The many motives of the spirit. 
Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. 

Christmas-Eve. 

Ah, the Past, the pearl-gift thrown 
To hogs, time's opportunity we made 
So light of, only recognized when flown! 

JOCHANAN HaKKADOSH. 



December 29. 
'Tis a strange thing: I am dying, Festus, 
And now that fast the storm of life subsides. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 275 

I first perceive how great the whirl has been. 
I was calm then, who am dizzy now — 
Calm in the thick of the tempest, 'but no less 
A partner of its motion and mixed np 
With its career. The humane is spent, 
And the good boat speeds through the brighten- 
ing weather; 
But is it earth or sea that heaves below? 
The gulf rolls like a meadow-shell, o'erstrewn 
With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore ; 
And now some islet, loosened from the land, 
Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean; 
And now the air is full of uptorn canes. 
Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks 
Unrooted, with their buds still clinging to them. 
All high in the wind. Even so my varied life 
Drifts by me; I am young, old, happy, sad. 
Hoping, desponding, acting, taking rest. 
And all at once: that is, those past conditions 
Float back at once on me. If I select 
Some special epoch from the crowd, 'tis but 
To will, and straight the rest dissolve away, 
And only that particular state is present. 
With all its long-forgotten circumstances 
Distinct and vivid as at first — myself 
A careless looker-on, and nothing more; 
Indifferent and amused, but nothing more. 
And this is death: I understand it all. 



2 76 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 

New being waits me; new perceptions must 
Be bom in me before I plunge therein; 
Which last is Death's affair; and while I speak 
Minute by minute he is filling me 
With power; and while my foot is on the 

threshold 
Of boundless life — the doors unopened yet, 
All preparations not complete within — 
I turn new knowledge upon old events, 
And the effect is ... but I must not tell; 
It is not lawful. Your own turn will come 
One day. Wait, Festus! You will die like me. 

Paracelsus. 

December 30. 
The poet's age is sad: for why? 

In youth, the natural world could show 
Nb common object but his eye 

At once involved with alien glow — 
His own soul's iris-bow. 

And now a flower is just a flower: 

Man, bird, beast, are beast, bird, man — 

Simply themselves, uncinct by dower 
Of dyes which, when life's day began. 

Round each in glory ran. 

Friend, did you need an optic glass, 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 277 

Which were your choice? A lens to drape 
In ruby, emerald, chrysopras. 

Each object — or reveal its shape, 
Clear outlined, past escape. 

The naked, very thing? — so clear 

That, when you had the chance to gaze. 

You found its inmost self appear 

Through outer seeming — truth ablaze, 

Not falsehood's fancy-haze? 

•How many a year, my Asolo, 

Since — one step just from sea to land — 

I found you, loved you, feared you so — 
For natural objects seemed to stand 

Palpably fire-clothed! No — 

No mastery of mine o'er these! 

Terror with beauty, Hke the Bush 
Burning but unconsumed. Bend knees. 

Drop eyes to earthward! Language? Tush! 
Silence 'tis awe decrees. 

And now? The lambent flame is — where? 

Lost from the naked world ; earth, sky. 
Hill, vale, tree, flower, — Italia's rare 

O'er-running beauty crowds the eye — 
But flame? The bush is bare. 



278 THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 



Hill, vale, tree, flower, — ^they stand distinct. 
Nature to know and name. What then? 

A voice spoke thence which straight unlinked 
Has once my eyelid winked? 

No, for the purged ear apprehends 
Earth's import, not the eye< late dazed. 

The Voice said, "Call my works thy friends! 
At Nature dost thou shrink amazed? 

God is it who transcends. 

asolando. 

December 31. 
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 

When you set your fancies free, 
When they pass to where — by death, fools think, 
imprisoned — 
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you 
loved so, 

— Pity me? 
Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 

What had I on earth to do 
With the slothful, with the mankish, the un- 
manly? 

— Being — who? 

One who never turned his back but marched 
breast forward. 



THOUGHTS FROM BROWNING. 279 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 
wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
sleep to wake. 

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 

Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should 
be, 
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, — fight on, 
face ever 

There as here!" 

Epilogue. 



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